


From Shores to Sand and Snow

by Dean_Wax, vistriga



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abuse, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Animal Sacrifice, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Bath Sex, Bathing/Washing, Betrayal, Biting, Blood Drinking, Bloodplay, Blow Jobs, Body Worship, Bondage, Bruises, Character Death, Character Development, Choking, Cock Piercing, Cock Worship, Costumes, Desert, Discipline, Dom/sub, Drug Use, Elder God, Emotional Manipulation, Fantasy, Fictional Religion & Theology, Flashbacks, Gay, Gay Male Character, Gay Sex, God Complex, Hair-pulling, Hand Jobs, Harems, High Fantasy, Humiliation, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Intimacy, Intrigue, Kings & Queens, Kissing, LGBTQ Character, M/M, Magic, Masochism, Murder, Mysticism, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Piercings, Plot, Poisoning, Politics, Possession, Prophetic Visions, Queer Themes, Quests, Rimming, Rituals, Rough Sex, Sadism, Size Difference, Slavery, Smut, Threesome - M/M/M, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2019-10-02 04:36:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 230,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17257682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dean_Wax/pseuds/Dean_Wax, https://archiveofourown.org/users/vistriga/pseuds/vistriga
Summary: Closer. His hands went up to the sides of the man’s neck, thumbs pushing into his jaw to set it proudly. “I see it.” His hips pushed forward. “Cobra.” Grinning lips seized the other’s, nipping carelessly in impression of the fire that burned in him. “I see you walk with the gods.” Thrill made a giddy shiver run through him. “And I follow.” Dropping fingertips to play on his shoulders, gentle where the light would have fallen on them; then harder, harder, digging into the shadows of his shoulder blades and each and every rib. Sucking at his tongue, as if he could taste himself before the first cut.=A slave without a family name and a brute without a country, bound together by infatuation and a pact of their own making in lands that are old, even older than the gods who still roam them, unseen.





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> This is a posting of the roleplay between myself and Vistriga, so you'll see a lot of perspective shifts as noted by "CHARACTER NAME -" breaks.

COBRA -

The room is an elegant contrast of natural-finished sandstone and polished marble tile, spacious and palatial as a dining room ought to be. Pure white curtains gently billowed from the open terrace doors overlooking the jade-green sea. The coast in the immediate vicinity was reserved for docking royal vessels and a small private beach, but if you looked far enough to the mouth of the cove you could make out the small, busy shapes of hundreds xebecs used by merchant traders, their sails dyed in all manners of colours. This was the reason they called the water by Navan's docks the 'bejeweled sea'.

Cobra is similarly bejeweled: at his throat, his ears, his nose, his navel. Gold and rubies for the special occasion tonight; a change from his usual blue-silver hues to match his cerulean eyes. A gold chain hangs down in an arc, peeking from beneath the flimsy piece of vermillion silk across his chest, obviously attached to yet more piercings. The accessories would be considered ostentatious if he were not a slave; as he was, it was an acceptable form of his master's boasting. He was draped against the man's calf, one arm looped over his knee, like an ornament. A cushion was set by the foot of his master's chair, a similar arrangement at several of the other settings at the long, low, rectangular table. Cobra held each and every one of the other slaves in equal measures of disdain and contempt.

The dignitaries were discussing trade agreements. They were always discussing trade agreements; having a foreign visitor did not change anything except Cobra's costume. Unlike his property, Hamad, the Duke of Navan, wore white. It was as spotless as the curtains; symbolic of his status. The short crop of hair on his head, transitioning into an immaculately groomed moustache and beard, was the same rich shade of brown as his Cobra's, but his skin was much darker. The slave was an obvious half-caste; from his blue eyes and locks of tousled, fine hair right down to muted skin tone, like coffee poured with too much milk. One of his parents would have hailed from the Northlands.

The tables are set with all manner of delicacies, fruits, breads and meats all served at once on various plates in both a visual and an aromatic orgy. As he carries on talking, Hamad occasionally passes food to Cobra's lips with such well-practiced discretion that he does not even break eye contact with his guests. Sniffing delicately, the slave finds a piece of spiced fish in front of him. Despite the abundance of it in the region, he is not grateful. He hates the taste. For a moment he entertains the idea of snubbing it; leaping up and ripping out the jugular of the serving boy to get at the platter of grapes he was bearing instead.

He doesn't, and with any more dallying, his master wouldn't be able to save face. He tips his head forward and eats it, chewing and swallowing without a flicker in his composure. An outsider might interpret his expression as utterly, utterly bored, and that was an exceptionally useful facade to have when there were snakes and politicians in the room.

If Hamad realised his mistake, he didn't comment on it. He would never. Instead, he said:

"Ah, but of course I have not yet shown enough hospitality. I see you have come with staff, but there are other matters to which a man would need attending. Why not borrow Cobra during your stay? I believe his mother hailed from a place near the mountains."

The dark veil of eyelashes lifts and for once, Cobra looks across the lavish table. He had seemed more interested in the ceiling before. Beautiful, moody Cobra. The glimmer in the Duke's eye. Whatever he wanted from this foreign visitor, it must have been important. With a ripple of lean musculature he drew himself up, stretching out his neck as he waited for a serving boy to hastily collect his cushion and reposition it at the ambassador's feet. The tinkling, golden coins on the sash belt of his side-split silk pants brought a strange air of ceremony to the act of crossing the room and taking a seat at the new man's feet.

"I'm sure you will be more than happy," Hamad carried on with a dazzling smile, his confidence crossing into the territory of cockiness. "He is exceptionally talented.

Cobra draped himself against the man's thigh in a similar fashion, staring across the table at his master's face with a smouldering expression. He did not speak, because others were present and he had not yet been spoken to. Once he was alone with a man, that was a different matter. For example, the next time he was in his master's sole company, he was going to regret every chew of that fish he had thrust upon him. For now, the slave simply took a deep breath, his eyes sliding up to the foreigner, unsmiling. He didn't know what to make of him just yet but his current desires didn't require an assessment of character.

"Feed me," he murmured, just loud enough for only the ambassador to hear but without hesitation in his voice.

 

SIGVARD -

A cool, salty breeze washed across the space, coming like ice against Sigvard’s cheeks. His body made a noise he hadn’t meant to; a small and fussy grunt, like an infant who’d spent too much time at the tit and now needed to be laid over someone’s shoulder and burped. His blue eyes were glassy, and the wave of his sandy blond hair was falling out of place, and his fair skin was ruddy and warm with the fever of a night’s worth of wine. It was that awful, sticky, deadening sort of warmth, made so much worse by this ungodly southern heat.

He slouched in his chair, spread his legs, and tried to be subtle about loosening the layers of cotton that he was swaddled in—he’d thought he’d been clever in wearing the traditional Navan garb that had been included in the ambassador’s wardrobe, although now he was sure it must be a sick sort of joke to cover onesself up like this in the middle of the desert. His nuts had been sweating so profusely for these last few waning hours that he was afraid to get up and leave a pool behind. After that feast, mind, he was incapable of moving much regardless. His belly was full of stuffed figs and glazed goat meat and some kind of pastry that stuck in the corners of his teeth.

Lifting a hand, he scratched where he’d nicked himself: He didn’t think the effete desert savages could grow facial hair, and so in a sign of would-be courtesy he’d shaved off what he’d grown during the long trip down from the north. Seeing the Duke’s beard, now, he realized his mistake.

Hamad was speaking to him. Spine straightening, Sig gave him his attention and a smile that couldn’t quite pass the test of being genuine. He watched the man’s lips carefully—it seemed to have some effect in helping him understand the foreign tongue better—and nodded along. “Yes,” he said, voice heavy with the northern accent that made vowels light and consonants thick and sharp. “Thank you. Yes.” Unlike his accent, the monosyllabic and disjointed way of speaking was a deliberate choice, along with pretend confusion between words like tariff and sharif, meant to annoy the other dignitaries into quitting their clamouring and leaving him alone to eat.

Sigvard Magnusson, as it happened, was an honoured guest at the table. Or rather, all the honour went to one ambassador Mads Larsson, but as he was rotting in a ditch somewhere hundreds of miles north of here, Sig had taken it upon himself to not let his share of Hamad’s hospitality go to waste.

And he well deserved it, didn’t he? All this, finding his way here, was no bit of luck. It’d been hard work; a dozen nights spent with loose-lipped lady’s maids who confused gossip with pillow talk, and a dozen more with laborers who snored while Sig was left to creep around their masters’ studies. From what he’d gathered: Larsson (rest his soul) had intended to represent the interests of the soon-to-be-crowned prince of Mottstad, a formidable little settlement that sat squat against a strait that halved the length of trade routes to the other side of the continent. Exclusive use of the strait had been held for decades by some other southerner tribe in an arrangement with the previous ruling house of Mottstad, but such went the way of loyalty in this day and age.

‘Staff,’ the Duke had mentioned. Yes, yes. Rotting also, tragically; the entire contingent replaced whole-cloth with hired mercenaries whose only trouble was fitting into fat men’s clothes. After their little gallivant around Navan, they were free to go their separate ways. In the meantime, they were meant to enjoy and exploit the Duke’s accommodations to the fullest.

Speaking of the matter. Sig’s gaze rolled down to the half-naked man at his lap; unsure, now, if he was meant to be his charge or his caretaker. Of course, he’d realized some hours ago who he was: Cobra, a distinct enough name, even if the piercings didn’t betray him. Fond memories, a decade old by now. The smell of hay and feet. Sitting in the shadows under the circus stands as a boy, he’d watch this creature contort himself—as if entirely for Siggy’s benefit—while he jerked his own little cock in a frenzy. A smile plucked at the corners of his lips, a deep and wonderful giddiness making him briefly forget the sweltering heat.

“Feed you?” His voice came out mocking, almost, as hushed as the slave’s. “What would you like to be fed?”

 

COBRA -

Incompetence. The question alone made Cobra's eyebrow quirk in the beginning of a disgusted expression before he had the mind to freeze it. He waited until his brow was smooth before he looked up at the man,  and what he saw made it hard to stifle another blanch. Northlander. He had not been paying much attention earlier, and the absence of a beard made him assume he was from some other land. Up close, now, he could see the nicks from a careless shave.

His grip around the man's calf tightened, not unlike a snake, as he shifted more of his weight onto his knees and straightened up to speak to the man's ear. Northlander or not, he was expected to be nice to his surrogate lord under the eyes of the court. Already they would no doubt be doing an excellent job of pointedly ignoring the clumsy effort of having a slave at dinner.

"Slaves don't touch the table," he purred, fingers sliding along the inside of the man's thigh through the cloth. Pathetic. An ambassador should have known that the whole point of Navanese slaves was to boast wealth and luxury beyond caring for one's own person. It was the reason there was enough gold piercing his flesh to purchase a horse.

"We're not supposed to choose," he carried on, lips curling into a hazy smile. "But it's in your best interest to feed me grapes." He squeezed the man's thigh, feeling the muscle there. He was seeming less and less like a proper ambassador by the moment. Perhaps he was a noble's son who'd proved too incompetent for military command. It wouldn't surprise Cobra.

 

SIGVARD -

Sig turned his cheek to catch the slave's breath, and kept his legs apart—overly conspicuous, maybe, with the man's hand making its way up his thigh, but he didn't much feel he had a burden to be subtle when the Duke had just loudly gifted him a whore. If Cobra could even manage to make him hard in spite of the wine that stained his lips, the other dignitaries should be content to look away.

A wide grin cracked his face and put wrinkles in his eyes. "You keep going like that, you'll find some grapes, hm?" He nodded to indicate Cobra's fingertips, and lifted his hips a little to push his thigh into his grip. Still, he waved over the serving boy. His calloused hands collected three grapes. Chewing down two, he cradled the other in the palm of his hand.

 

COBRA -

He was disgusting, but no more disgusting than any other dignitary. The only difference was that this one was bold enough to be suggestive in front of an audience. Tittering softly, the bejeweled man slunk back down to a proper seated position, draped over the other' thick thigh once more as he inspected the grape. Cobra had overcome any issues of pride with eating out of another man's hand years ago. He ate it without hesitation, smiling as the taut skin broken under his teeth and spread the sweet juice over his tongue.

"A good choice," Hamad's warm voice carried across the table. "That is his favourite. But I see you are growing uncomfortable; I know the heat must be an adjustment for a Northlander, and our wine affects the senses a little differently to beer. Perhaps you would like to bathe?"

 

SIGVARD -

"Oh!" Too drunk to hide his delight at the offer, Sigvard laughed open and honest and loud in the customary northern fashion, filling the small space with the noise of himself. It was only his first night in Navan; he wasn't accustomed to being pampered like this, although he was very very quickly developing a taste for it. "Yes, thank you." He sat up, nodding to all the men whose patience he'd exhausted. "Forgive me, I look uncomfortable. I'm not—" He struggled for the word, or rather the reverse of it. "I'm thankful. Very thankful. I'll write to the prince of your generosity."

Planting his hands on the table, he was having some trouble getting to his feet. "This one," nodding to Cobra, "he will show me to my bath?"

 

COBRA -

Cobra, who had not been drinking, nimbly sprang to his feet as the towering man rose up from his seat. He watched the blond's sluggish movements for a moment before he stooped to help him up with great reluctance, steadying him at the elbow.

Hamad returned a chuckle in kind, but with the way his eyes sparkled, Cobra sincerely believed his laughter was targeted at Cobra having to deal with such an oaf rather than any shared humour. Most of the other lords knew better than to join in.

"Yes," Hamad beamed. "Cobra will show you the way. We can meet tomorrow afternoon to look over the documents and sign them."

Biting back a sigh, Cobra escorted the man as best he could out of the dining hall, through the large wooden doors held open by two stoic, waiting guards. As twilight grew, the cool marble hallways were sparsely lit by ornate oil lanterns set into the wall. The bathing chambers were a short walk down the halls but Sigvard's staggering made it slow process.

"You have no idea how to conduct yourself as an ambassador," Cobra sneered aloud without reservation now that they were alone. "Did they hand you the title the day before you departed? Or can your kingdom no longer afford to employ an advisor?"

 

SIGVARD -

Sigvard, preoccupied now with the impossible task of untangling himself from this foreign garb, didn't immediately react to his keeper's lashing tongue. A sharp frown creased his features, but once he'd finally gathered up the cotton hem and plotted a maneuver to pull it over his head, it softened a little.

His dull eyes met Cobra's. "It seems to me as though you have no idea how to conduct yourself as a slave." Hoisting the garment over his head revealed a scrapper's body, lean and tight and even quick, perhaps, when not entirely handed over to the drink. Or perhaps not, given the dozen different knifepoint scars littering his torso. Clumsily, he began shuffling out of his pants. "Come, I haven't bathed in weeks. I'll need you to scrub all the places I can't reach."

 

COBRA -

The bathing chamber, one of several in addition to the grander one in Hamad's private chambers, was made of rough sandstone walls and smooth sandstone tiles, with enough grip to keep steady even when they were wet. The centre of the room was filled with a large, shallow pool of cool water, the edges set with raised step so that a servant could sit and bathe a master without getting submerged.

"You don't know what a slave is," Cobra scoffed in reply. He narrowed his eyes at the sight of the man's scarred body, perturbed. Scars, he had seen before; he even had his own. But not on the body of a noble. He'd fucked more than his fair share of soldiers, too; generals, commanders, majors. This mad had the body of an experienced private; sergeant at best.

Without hesitation, the slave wrinkled his nose and used both hands to shove the drunk face-first into the waiting water. He circled the pool, the tinkling sound of his jewelry following on as the loud splash grew quiet. He laughed as the man surfaced for air.

"I bathe alone," he informed the other haughtily. "But I will wash your back if you tell me how you got those scars."

 

SIGVARD -

Bursting to the water's surface with probably exactly the contorted expression of terrible surprise the slave was hoping for, Sigvard wrapped his arms around himself and waded tight-lipped to the water's edge. Once there, though, he only turned and offered his back. Cobra was proving himself a nuisance, and no longer a very entertaining one, but it wouldn't occur to him to complain to the Duke—the petulant thing was still well within the realm of problems he could deal with.

"Which one, pet?" He palmed a stone of pumice from the ledge, and set to work smoothing the thing over his chest. He pointed to a mark in his left pectoral. "This one, I got from a spurned lover." An overambitious street rat, actually, who'd stuck him and very soon regretted his choice. He nodded to one on his bicep, next. "This—I stepped between the princeling and his would-be assassin." In truth, that one was self-inflicted. In sleep, he'd rolled over on his knife.

Taking another pumice into his free hand, he lifted it to waggle in Cobra's direction. "Would you, please? My back."

 

COBRA -

"Pet? I'd make a terrible one of those." Cobra quirked his eyebrows as he stepped closer to the water's edge, taking an elegant seat behind the sulking man's back. He splayed his fingers over the man's shoulders, giving the muscle an appraising squeeze as the man spoke. He had no reason to doubt the stories; they were reasonable enough, after all.

"I see," he simpered, lips brushing the blond's ear as he leaned forward and took the offered pumice stone. "And were you so bad at combat that they decided to make a diplomat out of you? You aren't much better at that, either." Snickering, he leaned back and used his palm to apply the pumice, scrubbing in small circles across the width of Sigvard's back. 

 

SIGVARD -

"Something like that," Sig mused vaguely, perfectly content for the slave to come up with his own story. He continued to rub at his chest for only another minute, and even then, only half-heartedly; he was relaxing back into welcome touch, indulging in the tenderness of it. "Neither of us were cut out for our lot, hm?"

His eyes closed, and he gave up the act of washing up, setting his stone aside. "How does a shit like you stay in your Duke's favour?" The smile that spread over his lips would be private, if only his shoulders didn't rock in chuckling to himself. "You bugger him just the way he likes it? Maybe you bugger me like that later tonight, after your bath. Or do you only play nice with a cock up your ass?"

 

COBRA -

Cobra made short work of the man's back, but even after he set down the pumice he kept his hands on the man, noting the way he seemed to relax into the touch. Smirking, he leaned closer, arms looping around the man's shoulders to grope his chest.

"The Duke likes me because I am beautiful but also useful. The other slaves are afraid of me, and that makes the other lords afraid of him." Sniggering, his fingers found the Northlander's nipples, tugging them a shade too roughly before Cobra's grinning mouth nipped at the blond's ear. "I can fuck you, if you like," he offered huskily. "You'd be surprised how many powerful men crave it. But my cock can take some getting used to."

As Sigvard would no doubt learn in time, the slave was referring to piercings. Ten more barbells, evenly spaced from the base of his shaft in a ladder than led to the underside of his head. It was indeed one of the reasons Hamad had not tired of him yet; the healing time alone took months, so it was not a simple task to pierce another slave.

 

SIGVARD -

Sigvard's brow pinched at the answer to his question, complicating the serenity in his face; his intoxicated mind fixating on the word afraid. "Why should—?" But the slave's fingertips, beautiful and useful like he was, worked a perfect little pain into him, and all his curiosity vanished.

Tipsy laughter, then, like back at the table. His body pushed back into the slave's embrace, unfazed by the warning, or promise, or threat, perhaps, about his prick. He assumed he was talking about his size, of course; and in that regard, a man like Sigvard was maybe better prepared than a dignified ambassador. "Now you have me curious," he droned, lazy. Ordinarily, he'd work a little harder. Ordinarily, he had to. He began to wonder how much it would put him out to purchase a slave of his own. Turning in place, he lifted his eyes to Cobra's, and laid his heavy arm about his waist. "Later," he nodded. "I'm enjoying this bath, now."

The impostor raised his free hand from the water, then, to tug gently at the chain that hung across the slave's chest. "You have some Northlander blood in you." He'd been curious for some time, and not just since landing in Navan. "Your father, hm?" The northern stock was a strong one, and the men of their land prided themselves on a thousand individual conquests across the continent. "Or was your poor mother raped by one of these barbarians?"

 

COBRA -

Cobra huffed quietly as the man turned around with the comment. "Most men are," he shrugged, making no effort to close his spread legs. The bulge underneath the silk was sizeable compared to the average man, it was true, but like this, the piercings were hidden from view.

"Sure you are," Cobra snickered, lips curling into a derisive smirk. "It wouldn't have anything to do with the wine making your cock slow." Not concerned with getting his feet wet, he dipped a foot into the water, nudging against the man's prick with his toes.

The expression on his face grew slightly more weary at the question of his heritage, causing his eyes to widen but no sound to escape his mouth as the man tugged at his chained piercings. "It was my father," he ground out the word with obvious distaste, his foot pressing harder against the man's body. "You'd  do well not to call my people barbarians."

 

SIGVARD -

Sigvard's hips jerked back, just a little, at the punishing pressure; his sobering gaze was steady and unblinking on Cobra's as he readied his body to escape any further tortures to his cock, if need be. Still, a grin split his lips. A hum burrowed up from his throat, gravelly and teasing. "Forgive me." His hands lifted in supplication. "As you said. I don't know how to conduct myself as ambassador."

 _My people_ , he'd said. Very curious. Given the choice, as a half-race, he couldn't imagine why a man would elect to identify with the inferior part. Regardless, as the slave's purposeful foot was making abundantly clear, he wasn't meant to investigate. It would likely be wise, he thought, to neglect to mention his knowledge of Cobra's past as a performer.

His eyes flicked down to Cobra's thighs, and his body moved to suggest that he'd very much like to stand close between them—not without the permission, of course, of the other man's foot. "I want to know more." Not of his history, but of something he'd seemed to take a kind of pride in. "What is it that makes all those other slaves afraid of a thing like you?"

 

COBRA -

"Then _learn_ ," Cobra said coldly, retracting his foot with a warning sneer that slowly grew to an appraising look. Reaching out with both hands, he cupped the man behind his ears as he stepped closer.

"I've never seen a Northlander without a beard," he remarked with a raised eyebrow, giving another huff of laughter. "A man, anyway." He ran his thumb over the smooth jawline, nick included, before Sigvard's question made him smirk again.

"No one in the court has the authority to punish me except the Duke, so I'm free to punish them as I see fit." And punish them he did; he had most of the slaves cowering in the first few months. "Let's just say I'm very resourceful."

 

SIGVARD -

The water had brought Sigvard's body down to a much more natural temperature, and so when he mingled between the slave's legs, he found the heat of him delightful. His arms looped around Cobra's hips, resting heavy on his thighs, and his fingers drew shapes in the small of his naked back: Shapes of tits, and cocks, and of those little boats he saw on the sea at dinner.

"You strike me that way," he said, not letting his gaze drop from the other man's. "As resourceful." Not that it was terribly difficult to frighten slaves, he imagined, but he suspected the pretty thing enjoyed flattery. "You like it here? You don't get bored of Hamad?" In perfect self-indulgence, he dipped his head to push his lips against the warm flesh of Cobra's abdomen.

 

COBRA -

It took a moment for Cobra to understand what the lewd shapes drawn on his back were, and he tittered and ran his fingers through the man’s blond hair in response to it. He knew well enough to spot obvious flattery but that didn’t mean he was about to spurn it.

“Good boy,” he cooed, ruffling the ambassador’s hair as his warm lips pressed against his tanned skin. His grin tightened somewhat at the question.

“This life is not without its boring spells,” he drawled. “Though I still prefer it to the alternatives. I do not imaging thugs at whorehouse would be so forgiving nor as generous as Hamad.” He sighed. “And what about you?” He asked, tilting his head. “You have the body of a fighter, surely you must hate these diplomatic meetings.”

 

SIGVARD -

A man should not have been so thrilled at that demeaning little praise, 'good boy,' or at least he should have pretended not to be. Sig, for his part, couldn't be fucked to hide the effect that it had on him. A low noise rumbled in his throat, and he moved his body closer, and his roughened fingertips pressed into the muscles of Cobra's back.

Meetings, meetings. It was a nuisance to remember what they were talking about. These were the moments when lies got exhausting. "This one isn't so terrible." His mouth trailed kisses up, up, to the last bit of nakedness below the fabric that covered the slave's chest. He parted his lips, and used his teeth to worry at the skin there. "Signing papers. I don't mind signing papers." His palms swept up the slave's sides, pushing into the structure of his muscle and flesh, dragging fabric up with it so that his mouth could carry on. "Save my strength for you, hm? Show you a little generosity."

 

COBRA -

Cobra’s eyes crinkled at the corners as he watched the bigger man’s response. He wondered just how far he could push that envelope before he would rub against Sigvard’s temper in the wrong way. Easier to do that when he had his cock in his, though, and the man was currently exploring his chest. The red silk pushed up under his arms and banded across his collar bone, fully exposing his dusky nipples pierced with gold rings, each end of the delicate chain clasped between them.

“No wonder Hamad likes you,” he commented airily, pulling the man’s head in closer to one of his nipples. “Getting papers signed is one of his favourite things. But just what is it that you think you could give me, hmm? Or is it just a euphemism for your cock?” Cobra cracked a crooked grin.

 

SIGVARD -

Greed was very quickly overtaking Sigvard, replacing his earlier, indulgent leisure. His mouth traveled over skin in a hungry pursuit of Cobra's left nipple, and with pointed tongue he toyed with the ring that pierced it; delighting in the faint jingle of the chain against the man's chest. As he closed his mouth against flesh to suckle, a tipsy sort of giggling shook his shoulders at the slave's chiding.

Hands fell to the back of Cobra's hips, and with a firm tug he pulled him a small bit closer to the water's edge. His chest pushed into the shape of the slave's prick, and his eyes flashed up before he drew his busy mouth away to speak. "A euphemism for my tongue, at least." He leaned more weight into the man's crotch. "But what would you like from me?"

 

COBRA -

A faint groan, more like a hum, came from the slave’s throat as he arched his back into the touch of Sigvard’s lips. Despite his talk about the beard, the feeling of a smooth jaw against him was pleasant. He grunted, blue eyes cracking open with a faint grimace as he the man rugged him closer to the pool. Cobra’s thigh were close to doing the splits, now, the severe spread pushing out the mound of his cock which had started to plump up underneath the silk thanks to all of Sigvard’s attentions.

“I want you to be a good little boy and swallow my cum,” he answered, tone patronising as he reached down and ran a thumb across the man’s spit-slick bottom lip before he pushed the digit in, uninvited. He seemed to like sucking, after all; it was all fair play to Cobra. “But _can_ you, is the real question,” he teased.

 

SIGVARD -

Sig welcomed the thumb with a giddy smile, catching it between his teeth and rolling his firm tongue over the tip of it. His lips closed, then, and he gave his little slave-master the heat and sensation of his nursing mouth.

The water of the bath lapped quietly at stone as the northerner dipped his body low, making himself useful again nibbling at the skin around Cobra's waist. His palms, still at the back of his hips, groped roughly at the flesh of his ass. "Undress yourself for me," he muttered, dipping his tongue into the man's navel. "I can't figure out these fucking southern clothes."

 

COBRA -

Cobra couldn’t help but imagine the feeling of those lips wrapped around his cock, his teeth sinking into his bottom lip as he shifted his hips. His thumb freed, the slave’s expression grew devious as he shifted back, feet lifting and pressing on the Northlander’s shoulders. He had a split second of notice before he was pushed back into the water again. Cobra used he momentum to slip back from the bath’s edge, shifting onto his knees and discarding the coin belt around his waist in a fluid movement. He had dozens of hours of choreography memorised, though he would no doubt be rusty at some of the more complex parts of it, a simple strip tease was easy. The slip of fabric serving as his shirt was the first to go, turning his body to the side to deny to man a full frontal view of his pierced chest.

Snickering, he turned some more, sliding his thumbs underneath the sides of his silk pants and pulling the fastenings free. Bending at the waist, he slid the the fabric down slowly, undergarments and all, smirking over his shoulder as he did so. His luxurious lifestyle had put a healthy curve of fat over the muscles of his legs and ass but more importantly, the angle exposed the golden barbells glinting along the underside of his cock as it swung down between his smooth thighs.

“Are you still so confident?” He simpered.

 

SIGVARD -

Surfacing, Sigvard filled his lungs with air and leaned back to float, slowly wagging his arms through the water and watching that fucking imp where he knelt on the stone. The man's precociousness would have annoyed him, perhaps, if only he wasn't stripping for him regardless. As it stood, blue eyes measured every inch of him. He watched the ethereal light play off the water and highlight the sculpture of him in shadows—the lines of his ribs, the ripple of muscle under skin, the curl of his hair.

The shine of metal on his prick punched the breath from Sig's lungs. He was on his feet, closing the gap between them with long strides, for the first time annoyed at the drag of the water slowing him down. His eyes were fixated on Cobra's cock. "Let me see you," he ordered, more curious than demanding. His arm lifted from the water, his firm hand gripping at the slave's supple thigh, pulling at him in a bid to have him turn to face him fully. "You marvelous creature. Let me see your prick."

 

COBRA -

The silk hit the back of his knees and Cobra straightened up, swatting the grabbing hand away from his leg and twisting down into a seated position, cock coyly obscured by his thighs as his kicked the silk off his ankles. “Hmmm?” He asked with a mocking hum, using splayed fingers to push his shaft, almost fully hard now, down so the piercings on the underside would be out of view. “Do you like my prick that much?” He asked, deliberately stalling. “Did you think I was simply talking about girth?” He chuckled, using his hand to slowly stroke down the length in front of the man. “Touch me,” he ordered huskily.

 

SIGVARD -

The Northerner's jaw clenched, maddened by the mere _glimpse_ of that artwork and now the expert teasing of his company. The water was running cooler, somehow; or he was running warmer.

Silent, obedient, he moved back into his place in front of the slave. His hand lifted again. This time, gentle, settling into the crease of his waist, dragging light fingertips down the outside of his leg. He kept himself low in the water. His cheek knocked at the man's knee, and he turned his lips to the tender flesh inside his thigh. Soft kisses, at first, like before. Then nibbles, then sucking at his flesh, drawing the heat of blood to the surface, wanting to leave marks, wanting to damage him. He nestled further between his thighs, then further, then further. Purposefully ignoring the prick, though he could think of nothing else.

"Put your hand in my hair again," he murmured. His free hand went to his own neglected cock, and the water rippled gently as he tugged at its stiffness.

 

COBRA -

Cobra smiled. Hamad has grown so accustomed to the sight of his plaything that he took it for granted; it was pleasing to be genuinely revered again. Legs dipping back into the water, he spread his thighs for the the man, the weight of his cock making it loll atop one of his thighs with the help of one guiding finger. He watched the man kiss at his skin, drawing in a deep breath through his nose as the attentions became rougher.

“Bruise me and I’ll be fond of you. Cut me, and I’ll make you suffer for days,” he promised sweetly, pushing his fingers through the pale hair at the top of the man’s head. He used the grip to pull him closer, chuckling openly at the sight of the man’s face shoved so desperately between his legs.”What is your name?” He asked curiously. He’d never asked for it until now.

 

SIGVARD -

Hearing the slave’s wishes, the foreigner dug his fingertips a little deeper, palmed his ass a little rougher, and put a little more stinging pain into each love bite his hot mouth left behind. He cooed into Cobra’s flesh as his hair was used as a leash. Nosing hungrily, now, into the junction of his pelvis, he flashed the pad of his tongue over the smooth skin of his balls—intending to give them his more full attention, when everything was complicated by the man’s next question.

He couldn’t tell him he was Sig; that wasn’t the name on the messengers’ lips. Neither could he stomach being called Mads, he thought, for this and any other encounter with this beautiful thing. He pushed out a complaining noise, obviously disdainful that he was being asked. “My name doesn’t matter with you.” Close enough to the truth. His head rocked up, temporarily abandoning its duty to watch Cobra’s eyes. “What would you like to call me when we are like this?”

 

COBRA -

The thrill of it, each bite and loving suck, had Cobra gasping. Each noise form his throat was quiet but keening, as though being loud was something he will fully suppressed. His loins twitched as Sigvard’s tongue reached his balls, although his eyes opened at the telling hesitation giving his name.

His thighs, so quick to open, we’re quicker still to close, pressing around the foreigner’s thick neck firmly. He didn’t lock his ankles and squeeze hard enough to choke him, but he could, and the warning squeeze coupled with the stern glare in his blue eyes suggested that quite ruthlessly.

“Stupid people are rarely feared as I am,” he informed the other haughtily. “I had thought you were strange, but now I am sure you are a liar. Its irritating that you would even assume that I cared about your sodding political tricks.” Scoffing, he reached down and pinched the man’s cheeks. “I _want_. Your _name_ ,” he ground out with a sneer.

 

SIGVARD -

Both of Sigvard’s hands lifted to the slave’s thighs, as if he had a chance of leverage should Cobra choose to make this arrangement any more unpleasant for him. He watched his eyes, careful now. Although he didn’t seem to be quite rid of the shit-eating grin he’d been wearing most of the night.

“Sigvard,” he admitted. A heat prickled at his cheeks, as though his mind and body were in violent disagreement. His fingertips dug a little harder into the meat of Cobra’s thighs, massaging them. “But my name doesn’t matter; call me something else.” His cheek turned, and he nipped again at the man’s skin. “Open your legs and let me finish with you.”

 

COBRA -

Cobra clicked his tongue, tilting his head to one side as he appraised the man in his legs’ grip. “Such a Northern name,” he complained, deliberately squirming his thighs in response to the touch. “What shall I call you then? Whore? Fool?” The insults lacked venom; Cobra was surprisingly quick to mellow as long as he got what he wanted. Chuckling, he took a grip in the man’s hair again, tighter this time, pulling the man back as he slowly released him from the choke hold and parted his legs. Taking his cock in his other hand, he stroked it with an almost thoughtful expression, holding the blond far enough to keep him from getting his lips on it.

“Would you beg for it?” He asked curiously. “Is it that beautiful to you?”

 

SIGVARD -

Sig laughed lowly, a rough little sound as though he carried the chill of the northlands in his chest. Nothing like the free, flowing, honey-like way Cobra had of speaking. “Fool is good,” he nodded. “Whore is better. Boy. Cunt. You know the ones, I am certain.”  
  
If they were going to carry on with a battle of wills, it would have been better for his position to keep his eyes on the slave’s. He couldn’t manage it. His hazy vision was entirely on that cockhead, watching light and shadow. He delighted at how hard he’d made him. That thick and blushing thing. He could see the way the barbells moved just-so against his knuckles as he stroked himself. “You are beautiful,” he not-quite echoed, growing impatient. Blunt fingernails dragged lines down the outside of his thigh. “I want to taste you. I want you to give me all of your cum.”

 

COBRA -

Cunt. The word made the slave's lip curl. Yes; he knew them all. The Northlanders were terribly fond of that one, which carried so much more weight in their deep voices. He'd been called it many times himself.

"You are as bad at begging as you are at diplomacy, Sigvard," he taunted the other with his real name regardless of his request. He smacked the tip of his cock against the man's lips but did not pull his head back; he let the blond open his mouth and get a taste of the warm, velvety flesh.

"You are lucky I am horny," he muttered, releasing his grip on himself to run his fingers through the hair at Sigvard's temples. "Worship me, then, if you like pretty things so much," he chided the other, pulling his face forward. "See where it gets you."

 

SIGVARD -

The slave's dick was out of his grip, now, and Sigvard felt the full weight of it against the pad of his tongue. He sucked softly at the tip of him, and a rumbling hum of perfect satisfaction summoned up from his chest and into his mouth to surround the decorated prick's head.

He kept one of Cobra's thighs on his broad shoulder, but shrugged the other off to provide better access for a wandering hand. Taking the man's shaft in delicate fingers—though his impression of delicate was laughable—he lifted it out of his mouth to inspect the ornamentation. "You can teach me to beg," he offered distantly, preoccupied in watching the way the barbells moved with the pressure of his thumb. "You can teach me diplomacy, too, maybe."

The Northlander's mouth found the base of his shaft, nosing again at his ballsack. He spread his tongue wide and fat against the underside of the length of him, and took his time in dragging it over ridge after ridge after ridge to his head; blue eyes flashing up to see what kind of effect it had on him. Was he made numb by these things? More sensitive? How might his girth feel up Sig's asshole, too? Strange, he thought. Or delightful, perhaps, if he took him as a dog took his bitch.

His own cock twitched. Both hands full—one holding the man's prick, the other taking fistfuls of his flesh at his waist, his hip, his ass—he had to do with rocking his hips forward into empty water.

 

COBRA -

The slave let out a noise of complaint as the delicious suckling stopped merely to have his dick inspected like some curio at an antique shop. His huffing sigh implied that he was used to it with any man he bedded, however, and he let the foreigner have his fun, knowing from experience that it was best just to let them get their fascination out of their system.

"That's a dangerous proposition," he informed the other silkily. "And I know nothing of diplomacy. What I deal in is _discipline_." His dusky lips curled into a satisfied smirk as the man brought his mouth to him again, humming like a content cat as he watched Sigvard work through eyes closed to slits.

"Yes," he said breathily, interpreting the man's behaviour. "I still feel everything, but the tip will always feel best. Hmm..." He grit his teeth with a furrow in his brow as the man began to paw at his backside, the surface of the bath beginning to rock with shallow waves. "You're getting reckless," he scolded, the fingers in his hair tightening like a vice and stilling any efforts of his mouth. "Out of the water, mutt."

 

SIGVARD -

Struggling to see how he could be getting reckless when he'd barely even begun, Sigvard frowned sharply in his best impression of a pout. Somewhat more convincing without the beard. This wasn't fair; he'd only started to feel the slave come undone in his mouth, and anyway he'd just been given such delicious instructions. He wanted to worship that cockhead with his hot tongue, and knead bruises into his flesh, and push purposeful, squirming fingers up Cobra's perfumed little hole.

He dallied, in his horny consternation. But that grip in his hair was like spurs at his sides. Palms planted on wet stone, and he lifted his body from the water. Standing close to Cobra, his own rigid cock bumped clumsy against his naked skin. " _Mutt_ ," he parroted, lofting a brow and flicking his gaze over the slave's mix of northern and southern features. His voice was ragged and uneven, nothing like the cool and clever teasing he was aiming for; laced through with the same burning desire that made his empty hands float closer to the slave, wanting to touch. "Coming from you?"

 

COBRA -

He tugged at the man’s hair impatiently, not unlike a leash, when he hesitated. The slave was quickly growing content with his apparent freedom to behave so arrogantly without consequence, and he leered as he released the man’s hair and got to his feet, rising to meet the standing foreigner.

“Yes,” he said gamely, grabbing the base of the man’s cock tightly. “ _Mutt_. And that means your place is on your knees.” He flicked the head of the man’s cock with his other hand before he pointed to the ground.  The tiles would be hard on his knees but at least he wouldn’t thrash like a tuna caught in a net.

 

SIGVARD -

Sigvard's whole body jerked at the slave's latest punishment, all the air leaving him in a grunt of painful surprise that echoed against stone walls and back to where they stood. His shoulders had curled in some idiotic fucking instinct, as if they had any hope of protecting his cock from the vice-grip around it; fittingly enough, the posture left him standing like a cowering dog. He seemed to remember Cobra saying something about _discipline_. He wished, now, he'd been paying more attention.

Blue eyes were hard and sharp to match the other's, and his lips were pressed in a firm line. Before, in the water, that was just games. This was getting close to something real. It was good, like this; but it had the consequence of making his body ready for a fight.

The foreigner forced a smile. Rigidly, he dropped to his knees.

His eyes were on the prick in front of him again, watching it bob under its own weight, painfully unattended. He needed it. The taste of it, the fatness of it filling his mouth. He needed to hear all those obscene noises half-caught in the slave's throat and spilling carelessly over Sigvard's head. Lifting his hands as if to resume their places at Cobra's hips, he stopped just short. "May I continue? My little kennelmaster?"

 

COBRA -

The foreigner would learn the need to pay more attention in time. Hazy as he was right now, Cobra could have poisoned him a dozen times over. He’d spiked entire batches of the palace’s wine before. People were careless, and with his reputation they were too quick to avert their eyes which only made things easier.

“You may,” he scoffed with false cordiality, pulling the man’s mouth closer to his studded cock without ceremony. “All your talk of mutts, yet you’re practically drooling for my prick. You Northlanders are all the same.” Laughing unkindly, he pushed his hips forward, breathing deeply as more of Sigvard’s warm, wet mouth enveloped his cock. He was used to taking his time, but even he was growing steadily impatient as his shaft throbbed between the blond’s lips

“Suck me,” he said huskily, massaging the man’s scalp with his thumbs. “Now.”

 

SIGVARD -

Sigvard, for his part, was patient. He took the prick well, as it nudged roughly over his tongue; he only balked when he felt the new and startling sensation of metal beads itching the back of his throat. But he didn't retreat. He, like the rest of his northern brothers, wasn't in the habit of retreat. Pushing his face just a little further over the slave's length, he swallowed around it, the walls of his throat closing against it in a surge of merciless tightness and heat. He milked it a moment more, just like that. And then, needing some reprieve, he drew back until the cock's head was at the tip of his tongue.

The Northlander was a greedy thing. He'd moved his body close to the other's, content to take some heat from him if nothing else. Cobra's full ass was supple in his wide grip, the softness of his flesh giving way to the northerner's kneading fingertips. Between the knuckles of his thumb and forefinger, he pinched cruelly at his skin there, and down the back of his thighs. His pointed tongue had been swirling around the very tip of the southerner's cock, all the while; and he'd been nosing and kissing and sucking sharply at it as if to apologize for his body's need to breathe.

But his lungs were full, now, and the man who stood over him deserved more earnest attention. So he took the length he had before, and then more, deeper—gagging, briefly, at the tickle of of the ladder—further, until his strong nose pushed into the hair at Cobra's mound. He stayed exactly there until his chest began to ache, and then he rocked his head slowly back into the slave's fingertips; and then forward, faster. As his own hips writhed in emptiness, his head began to bob in a quick and practiced over the whole of Cobra's length.

 

COBRA -

Cobra hadn't expected the man to suck his cock with such skill. He supposed he thought the oral fixation was borne out of seeing the piercings rather than any real experience, but this man might as well have come straight out of a whorehouse. His breath hitched in his throat as the Sigvard swallowed his cock, his shoulders buckling as he resisted the urge to tighten his grip in the blond hair and ram his full length into the intoxicating heat. The play of the man's tongue over his skin made the slave cry out with an unexpectedly needy sound that echoed around the bathing chamber.

Swearing under his breath, Cobra grimaced as his hindquarters tensed underneath the ambassador's rough hands. It would seem that all the biting insults had left his mind for now, and he let out a low moan that abruptly cut short as Sig's devilish tongue swiped up the bead of precum from the tip of his fat cock. His expression was a mix of shock and arousal, taking one hand away from the man's hair and sinking his teeth into the skin of his palm where his thumb joined the rest of his hand. The instinct to silence himself would never truly leave him.

Despite the gag, as the man's head began to bob, stifled moans escaped his throat as he gasped around the hand, feeling himself draw closer and closer to climax. His prick thrummed as he pushed his hips forward with a keening whine, unable to hump the man's face as he wanted to thanks to the strong hands gripping his thighs.

 

SIGVARD -

The slave was making an absolute fucking fool of himself, and it was delectable. All those little noises. The way he couldn't control his body, the way he couldn't shut himself up, moaning like a bitch who needed nothing more than to be stuffed full. Sigvard's skin was like fire, and a heady lust made him as good as drunk again.

The blond hadn't come from a whorehouse, though certainly some of his choreography did. In his teenage years, there'd been a dark-haired beauty in Alvsten who'd take some coin to let Siggy suck his dick for awhile; and now, having spent most of his life on various roads with various horny soldiers of fortune, he'd had some degree of practice. It had become instinct to him. The thrust of Cobra's hips. The way his balls tightened against the Northlander's chin.

Sigvard drew back, dropping one of his hands to his own prick and collecting the slave's with the other. In tight grip, he stroked both quickly. Cobra would be free to fuck his throat now, if he chose to, and Sig wouldn't altogether mind it; though the intention of his mouth, now suckling at the cockhead, was to give him more careful attention. He took a space to breathe, and to command him: "Come for me." And he closed his mouth around his tip again, nursing at him, stroking him, pushing his hardened tongue against the first piercing at the underside of his head.

 

COBRA -

In many ways, Cobra despised fucking just as much as he loved it. The feelings, yes, of course it _felt_ good, but it came with the infuriating side effect of a loss of composure which grated on him; oh god, it grated on him so badly in these later years where he'd been left to stew in his own company. Snarling, he grit his teeth and pushed his cock down the man's eager throat for a few frantic pumps, torn between animal instincts and the plain fact that the tongue on his sensitive cock tip felt so, so sweet.

In the end, the sweetness won out, and with moan he pulled back and let the blond nurse on his head as he gasped for breath. It was hardly a strenuous fuck but there was already a light sheen of sweat on his skin; his taut, tan belly rose and fell rapidly with his breathing. He lasted only a few moments longer before he came with a cry, thick cum spurting onto Sigvard's waiting tongue as Cobra's vision grew numb and black at the edges. Breathing heavily, he opened his jaw in a silent scream as he rode out the dregs of his orgasm, giving his hips a half-hearted thrust in an attempt to make it last even longer. All it did was make him spasm as his climax faded and his over-sensitive prick sent frazzled responses to his brain. He pulled himself free of the beast's maw before he could decide to really make him scream.

What to say at a time like this? Narrowing his eyes, he pushed down on the Northlander's shoulders, making him sit and he followed suit, straddling his lap as he closed his hand over the fist Sig had around his own cock, guiding the stroking to be slow. Finally, he spoke. "The ambassadors don't usually suck cock so well," he purred, voice ragged. "But then again, you're not an ambassador, are you, _Sigvard_?"


	2. Divine Arrogance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha wow so in retrospect (this RP is over a year old so far) there's like, HEAPS of fucking at the start. Like there's a definite honeymoon period of just fucking like rabbits before some other wild shit starts going down and honestly? Not sorry. We might have to bump up the rating to Explicit, though.

SIGVARD -

In quiet duty, Sig had milked the slave; he swallowed his cum luxuriously, like one of those strange desserts back at the table, and kept a little in his mouth to savour. It had crossed his mind to torture him, of course. A little revenge for the way the stone made his knees raw and aching—a little punishment for Cobra allowing himself to be so  _ weak _ after making such an intoxicating show of strength in the bath. Rotten tease. But the southerner was one step ahead of him, and his mouth was empty of his cock before he could try for it.   
  
His tongue swirled against the sour and salty traces of seed in his mouth, and half-lidded eyes watched the slave's body move over his. He grinned at the words, not yet speaking. His free hand was on his waist, his hip, tugging at him so that his own cock might be closer to the heat between his legs. He pawed his ass again, and spread it to expose him to cool air; though as instructed, he'd slowed his pumping grip.   
  
Swallowing the last bit of Cobra's flavour, he shrugged dimly. "What is it, to be an ambassador? I'm here. I'll sign the papers." Some degree of overconfidence made him roll his shoulders. Was he supposed to be afraid of this slave, now? After he'd reduced him to a puddle with his tongue? No, no. Cobra had allowed him to get cocky, and it would take some work to make him believe that anyone—other slaves, and  _ masters _ he'd said—should be afraid of him. "I'll eat, and I'll have you."

 

COBRA -

Cobra laughed at the man with an incredulous grin even as he rubbed the pad of his thumb over the tip of the man's hard cock in slow, teasing circles. "And what do you think your country will do when they discover an impostor has been signing papers for them? I've seen many assassinations within these walls, you know." Judging by the patronising expression on the southerner's face, he clearly thought the brute was in over his head. That did not mean he was a bad fuck, however; Cobra's teeth graze his bottom lip as the man's calloused hands exposed the tender skin of his ass.    
  
"If you think you're fucking me without oil," he murmured, leaning in to nip at the blond's ear lobe. "Think again." His head dipped lower, nuzzling against the tendons of his neck before his lips found the pulse beating beneath the skin. Teeth then, too; biting, sucking, bringing up a galaxy of scandalous little marks on the man's neck that would make it obvious to the court what had taken place between them . All the while, he pumped the man's cock lazily, too slow to push him to any climax but enough to keep his fires stoked.

"Besides," he carried on as he lifted his head to nose in the man's hairline, as if the conversation had never been interspersed with a lewd remark. "What do you think will happen once all your papers are signed and Hamad had what he wants? He will grow bored of you just as he does with everything. What reason would he have to invite you to his meals and lend you his favourite slave once he has what he wants?"

 

SIGVARD -

Cobra’s mouth was so much better suited to biting than talking. Sigvard closed his eyes at the nipping pain, the feeling of his sucking mouth bringing blood tearing to the surface of his skin in purple-red marks. His breaths went deeper into his chest, and his hands seemed to lose their purpose—both of them lifting to the slave’s sides, tender on his ribs, drawing soft thumbs over his dark nipples. Oils, oils. His brow pinched in quiet complaint. He hadn’t thought that far ahead.   
  
Foresight, it seemed, was not his strength. Lids lifted to watch Cobra through lashes, as he contemplated the position that was being outlined by that troublesome mouth. He wasn’t quite afraid of death; it was a weeks-long trip from Mottstad to this place, and he’d always planned to be gone by then. The prospect of losing Hamad’s hospitality before the next sunset, however, was a little more dire. He’d developed a taste for those stuffed figs.   
  
He shrugged. “Maybe I don’t sign the papers. Maybe I find something wrong with them, maybe I have to write to the prince, maybe I have to meditate for some days.” That was tomorrow’s problem, and he was entirely uninterested in thinking about it now.   
  
In spite of Cobra’s efforts, his prick threatened to soften. Where had that fierce fucking thing gone?  _ Boy _ , and that evil hand in his hair, and promising him a cock that he’d have to get  _ used _ to, and all of that cruel and delightful dominance that had whipped him up in a frenzy in the first place. It seemed that the moment he emptied his balls, he became content and utterly feeble in his lap. Affectionate, almost, and dull. The Northlander wouldn’t again make the same mistake of allowing him to come. “Maybe I’ll sign them and fuck off somewhere else. I’ll miss his meals, but not his talkative pet, hm? I’m growing bored of you, little thing.”

 

COBRA -

He was stupid. Blind. To gain Cobra's favour so swiftly, enough to be spoon fed such valuable insight like honey, only to piss it all into the wind... the slave almost had to laugh. Almost. The spiky, metallic claws of his bad temper snatched the humour and crushed it before the sound could come, much like his hand tightened like a vice around the head of the man's cock.   
  
" _ Ungrateful _ ," he snarled, the word wrinkling his nose as it pushed out of his mouth. "Would you prefer to spend your time here in a dungeon? Would you prefer to  _ die _ ?" Jamming the weight of his body down on the man's lap, he used the leverage to shove his shoulders and push him onto the ground to knock his head against the floor.    
  
Cobra twisted his body and in the next moment, the shapely ass that Sigvard had been groping so keenly now eclipsed his vision. The slave sat on the Sig's face with a contemptuous huff, pointed toes curling tight near the man's head as he arched his back and tugged at the man's prick, teeth closing around one of his balls just enough to put the fear into him, which naturally wasn't much at all. The tip of a canine would do. "I hate men like you," he glowered over his shoulder even though the man couldn't see his expression. "Too strong to be smart, yet not dumb enough to be kind. What good are you, hm?!" he snapped, squeezing at the the base of the man's cock again and twisting his hand upwards.

 

SIGVARD -

Temper, temper. It took a moment for Sigvard to register the hot and swelling pain where the back of his head had collided with tile, and another minute to reel and suppress it; and by the time he realized again which way was up, he was grinning into the suffocating muscle and fat of Cobra's full ass.   
  
Immediately, like instinct, he was nosing for the slave's asshole, burrowing into his beautiful fucking flesh with his broad and naked jaw. His hands rose to seize the thick meat of his rear end, pushing into it, digging his fingertips to collect him in sadistic handfuls. He was  _ angry _ , now. Cobra was robbing him of more than just a good night; in his petulance, he was shattering some of his fondest childhood memories. The smell of hay and feet. Watching that body move through the stands. He kissed wherever his lips touched skin. His palm opened, retreated, and came down  _ hard _ in a smack that echoed around the room. His tongue found Cobra's hole, first. And then the edge of his teeth did. He pinched just the smallest bit of skin between them.   
  
It was effortless to shove the man a little ways off him—the advantage afforded to him, having spent his life doing  _ real _ work—although he didn't try to rearrange their bodies. He could have done it, sure, but maybe not without having his cock torn off, or his balls crushed between Cobra's teeth. "You seemed to think I was some good before," he heaved, breaths coming ragged with the pumping of his lungs. "All that whimpering, you needy creature." He grunted freely at the slave's punishment, but it wasn't quite enough to shut him up. "You wish you were born with a cunt, so Hamad could breed you properly?"

 

COBRA -

Cobra grimaced and managed to suppress any cry of surprise as the bigger man managed to nip the delicate skin of his pucker, his hips jerking forward a fraction and allowing the man to breathe. His pelvis ached in places from the Northlander's harsh grip, and the complaining throb only served to keep his bad mood simmering. The mention of the word 'breed' did little to help Sigvard's case.   
  
" _ Before _ ," he snarled, straightening up and dragging his fingernails along with him, leaving harsh red welts in lines that contrasted brilliantly against the foreigner's pale skin. "I  _ do _ have a cunt," he snapped back coarsely. " _ Taste _ it!" Upright now, he jammed his hips back down in a way that made it difficult for the the brute to breathe. His bent legs squeezed tighter around the blond's head as he genuinely considered allowing the man under him to pass out. His own breath came in angry pants, carefully unpicking the man's unwitting insult towards Cobra's Urdai mother and tucking it away at the back of his mind. Later, yes; poison. Something a little more severe than rotgut. Something he could  _ watch _ .   
  
A mean smile grew slowly on his face as he lifted his hips and allowed the struggling man to take a breath. "If I want to make noise, I will," he sneered. "As far as you're concerned, I am a  _ god _ to you. What a mutt like you thinks is none of my concern." 

 

SIGVARD -

It was too much. It was perfect, and it was altogether too much. Sigvard's skin stung. His head throbbed. His lungs ached with the fire of suffocation. He tried to turn his head in rejection, at first; but as a kind of heady dizziness overtook him—from the pain, maybe, or from the lack of air—he relented. His hands stopped their violence, and knitted and kneaded at Cobra's ass like some hungry kit. His hot tongue left his breathless mouth, curling, rolling, pressing hard against the slave's twitching asshole. His head was pinned to the floor, but still he  _ lifted _ it, greedy, as if even that wasn't enough, probing into the slave's tightness.   
  
Reprieve was sudden and intoxicating. He pulled in cool air in gasps that sounded like dying, and his fussing body relaxed. Half-lidded eyes looked up at darkness and imagined the slave's little button waiting for him, but what fucking good was it now that Sigvard was utterly flaccid? He could only think of breathing. His arms fell against cool stone, and his body shook with dry and exhausted and stupid laughter.

 

COBRA -

The desperation of the tongue at his hole was satisfying, yes, but the silence; the  _ inability _ of the man to run his mouth, the struggle which seemed to feed in Cobra's own perception of power so effortlessly... sublime. He took in a deep breath, exhaling with a serenity known only to the truly devout and the truly vindictive. His eyes fell on the man's limp prick and he let out a huffing chuckle. "Good," he shrugged dismissively, climbing off the man's face. "You don't deserve to cum."   
  
With a quiet  _ splash _ , the man's nude body dove into the bath, traversing the full length of it before he broke the surface of the water at the other end with a  gasp, squeezing the slick locks of hair back from his forehead. The bangles and bracelets dripped in uneven staccato, weighing heavily on his wrists. Cobra regarded them disdainfully for a moment before he started pulling them off, setting them down decisively in a way that suggested bitterness. The skin underneath the jewelry was mottled with scars.    
  
"You won't sign the papers," he announced, still working at his task. "I'm going to keep you here for a few more days. There are some things I want you to experience. Hamad is no doubt redrawing the papers as we speak to weigh more heavily in Navan's favour, anyway." Cobra gave an empty scoff. "Which guest room do they have you in?" he asked suddenly, looking over his shoulder. "What was the symbol carved into your door?" 

 

SIGVARD -

The Northlander let his eyes fall closed, a look of perfect contentment washing over his face. He didn't mind the tease, much. He could always bring himself pleasure later, or collect Cobra in his arms and hold him down to fuck him between the thighs. For now, he was happy enough that he could breathe.   
  
He spread his limbs out, hearing the faint clap of flesh falling heavy against stone. It was wonderfully cool beneath him. Almost enough to distract from the way his skin complained where Cobra had carved lines into him with his manicured fingers. Almost enough to make him forget the ache at the base of his skull. Almost.   
  
He nodded dimly, although the slave wouldn't see him. In spite of the fact that Cobra had been ready to smother him half to death, he was convinced the southerner had had as much fun as he did; he trusted his advice, now, if it meant they were going to extend these little games. "A fish," he croaked, hoarse. "Will you carry me there?" Opening his eyes, he rocked his head back to take in the image, upside-down, of the slave at the poolside. "Promise me that I'll get to experience your pretty cock filling me up, love."

 

COBRA -

Though he would never admit it, the reason the slave’s had crossed the pool was that part of him expected to be chased in an angry range. The bigger man seemed to keep tolerating his outrageous behaviour even now, however, and he drifted back to the poolside where he lay, hopping up on the edge of the bath so he could give his anklets the same treatment as his bangles.

He knew where the fish room was. Conveniently close to his own chamber, actually; Hamad would have planned his loaning long before the ambassador even arrived, for he was not an impulsive man. “You can walk,” he clicked his tongue, looking the man’s body over before he reached out and traced the line of one of the welts he’d made.

  
  


SIGVARD -

For a moment, Sig considered pushing the point, like some relentless fucking infant: Of course he could walk, but he didn't  _ want _ to, and wasn't it Cobra's duty to attend him? But as the night waned, it was becoming less and less rewarding to aggravate him. So he bit his tongue.   
  
Briefly.   
  
"You like your artwork?" His voice was a purr, or as close as a Northlander could manage, eyeing the fingers that walked the raised and reddened line on his fair skin. But Cobra hadn't answered him, fully. There was still that last little demand—or prayer, or something—hanging in the air. "Promise me," he repeated. At this point, he felt he'd seen all the other amusements the slave had to offer. The only thing that was left, in his mind, was that ornamented prick; he wanted to be able to tell stories about how it felt to be stuffed with it. ' _ If you're ever down in Navan, _ ' like.   
  
"Promise me, and I'll let you do more." He closed his eyes, again. "I'll let you do whatever you like, love. Promise me, or I'll sign those papers tomorrow."

 

COBRA -

Cobra smile, fingers flexing as he drew a new line along the man’s collar bone. He did like it, but he didn’t comment when there was clearly a more pressing matter on Sig’s mind. “I might,” he said, deliberately airy. “If you beg sweetly enough.” He turned away and scooped up more water, spreading it across his chest with a cocky chuckle. He doubted very much that the man would up and leave town without a more concrete answer. He could tell he was hungry for the chance.

Casting his eyes to his puddle of clothes on the floor, the slave decided he wanted new ones. “I need to redress,” he announced, getting to his feet and heading towards the towels in a neat, white tack by the wall. “Go to your room. I’ll come to you when I’m ready.”

 

SIGVARD -

There was something utterly unnatural about the southern sea air, the way it was warm and cool all at once. It billowed into Sigvard's quarters, now, in the same alien way it had done at Hamad's table: It kicked up dust on his private terrace, and made the linen drapes swell, and rustled the leaves of the jasmine plants placed about the room. It kissed at his hot skin, too, as if to soothe everywhere that Cobra had given him injury.   
  
Shuffling out of his pants—he'd only ever bothered to get half-dressed again, back at the bath—he made his way to a low table with a beautiful view that he had utterly no interest in. There was tea there, waiting for him, and a bottle that looked as though it could have been liquor; he snatched up the latter, and thumbed the cork to the floor, and tilted it to his lips to drink. Sweet, but not unpleasant; not too far off from a Northern mead. He took it along with him as he went out for a long piss. He nipped at it all the while he collected every pillow he could find and throw them in a heap on the mattress, which, to Hamad's credit, was already  _ abundant _ with them. This could may well be his last night in Navan, and he wanted it to be a luxurious one.   
  
He wouldn't wait up for Cobra. If the slave wanted to carry on playing, he thought, he wouldn't hesitate to wake him; so he crawled bare-assed among the plush pillows, and held the bottle to his chest, and succumbed to one of those dreamless and fitful sleeps usually reserved for soldiers at roadsides.

  
  


COBRA -

He did take his time; even the gold barbells piercing his nipples were stripped of their chain by the time he was done. The chain was too flashy; it reminded him of the stories about the king’s own slave, which served as both a horror story and the stuff of legend amongst the slaves. Some said he sewed diamonds into his skin and walked on crystal spikes.

He wore a simple overall in a rich navy, not expecting to keep it on long. The pants hung lips and low, fabric bunching at the knees, and the narrow slip of a bib that tied behind his neck left so much of his torso exposed that a loin cloth may have been more decent. His pockets rattled with vials; all oils. The poison was in the stuffed figs on the tray he carried, set with other sweets and yet more booze. He hadn’t been paying attention to the man at the table, but the serving boys had. All Cobra had to do was ask what the man had favoured.

He slunk into the room as quietly as possible, not surprised to see the ambassador sleeping amongst the cushions. It did however present and interesting opportunity that made the slave smirk as he set down the tray. Pulling the strip of fabric that kept his loose pants from exposing his ass free from his waist, he knelt down and tied it around the sleeping man’s eyes as a blindfold. Even if he awoke, Cobra doubted the man would protest. He didn’t have anything to bind his arms, anyway, so he could pull it off if he was so inclined. But again, Cobra doubted it, smirking as he used his teeth to pull the cap off a vial and releasing the faint aroma of menthol into the room. He dabbed some on Sig’s nipples first, and if he was already awake then he soon would be thanks to the growing sensation of hot and cold making the twin nubs stand erect.

 

SIGVARD -

Sigvard's nostrils flared at the sharp smell of mint, and he opened his eyes to blackness. He muttered, at first, and fidgeted in his place—but only because he couldn't quite remember where he was. When he felt the cushions beneath him, and heard the hiss of a breeze over water and through the leaves of olive trees, he began to settle.   
  
Feeling fingers on his chest, he was sure, at first, that Hamad had sent him some other slave: They were far too delicate, and this was far too simple, for it to be the man in the bath. Disappointment lasted an instant. Very quickly, he realized his mistake. His lips parted to draw a deep and surprised breath at the cool flames licking at his nipples, and the muscles of his naked abdomen tensed and curled, apparently trying to work  _ against _ the strange and wonderful feeling. A grin split his lips wide; a laugh fell out of him. He couldn't seem to decide whether or not he wanted to let Cobra know how  _ new _ of a thing this was; and in that conflict, he made it obvious.   
  
His hands lifted to find those devilish fingers, to trace the way up his arms and down to his hips again. To feel clothes, even if  _ barely _ , was upsetting. Hard thumbs pushed past fabric, into flesh and bone. "Hello, pretty thing. Is this one of your experiences?"

 

COBRA -

A deep chuckle emitted from Cobra's throat as he watched the grin spread on Sigvard's lips. "Is that any way to speak to a god?" he asked with a shit-eating grin of his own, reaching up with one hand to pull the string holding the front of his overall around his neck. The fabric fell and puddled around his smooth hips where he caught one of the foreigner's hands and guided it towards the curve of his ass.    
  
He leaned down, tongue laving lazily across the man's ear before he spoke. "I'm going to make you scream," he promised quietly. "This is just the beginning." Exactly what he was referring to was unclear; perhaps it was the poison, perhaps it was the dab of menthol across the slit of his prick where the icy-hot sensation would work its way into his most sensitive tissues. Cobra's head dipped and his teeth closed roughly one one of the nipples he'd abused without warning.   
  
"Stroke yourself," he ordered. "I want you hard." 

 

SIGVARD -

The Northlander's body was still heavy from his nap, and he squirmed in place to settle deeper into the mess of heavy cushions that surrounded him. His hand found Cobra's ass; humming his approval, he groped at it, lazy and clumsy and with a kind of  _ possessiveness _ to it. His head fell back, then. If his eyes weren't going to be any use to him, he'd crane his neck and lift his chin so that the slave's mouth could roam wherever it wished to.   
  
He felt the smear of oil onto his prick's head, though it was the bite that made him hiss and startle. The menthol had a way of starting out almost  _ gentle _ , ever-present but merely annoying; so, as yet unperturbed, he dropped his hand to paw roughly at his cock and balls in quiet obedience. Behind the blindfold, his eyes pinched closed. He liked this, seeing nothing. It made all the nerves in his body so much more receptive to touch. He felt the wet heat of Cobra's breath and tongue. The cushions' fabric rubbing at the skin of his ass and thighs. The slave's body moving against Sig's wide palm.   
  
A small, whining coo left his throat. His cockhead was burning with a white heat that had now begun to creep down  _ inside _ the length of him. It was quickly surpassing the degree of pain he was accustomed to taking without complaint; though it wasn't nearly enough to crush his arousal, particularly after Cobra's cruel teasing in the bath. He tugged at his prick, still, and felt it blush and begin to swell in his grip.

Caught between pain and pleasure, and  _ blind _ at that, he was quickly beginning to lose all of his earlier composure. His spine arched weakly, pushing his chest out in silent begging for Cobra's teeth again, offering up his throat for the slave to tear out. His breathing was ragged, and deep, and more and more laced through with wanton whimpers. His hips rocked as if to fuck his hand. He emptied his fistful of the slave's ass to pinch at his skin instead.   
  
"Please, love," he murmured, vaguely. His palm wandered up from the slave's rear, then; over his torso, squeezing at his chest, taking a hold of his throat and pushing his thumb messily over those soft lips. "Please?"

 

COBRA -

His savage mouth moved to the man’s other nipple, careful to bite and tease with the tip of his tongue but never suck, lest he take away the effects of the menthol. Shoving Sigvard’s thighs apart with his hands, he settled between them with a self-satisfied purr, one hand sneaking away to trace over the other vials he’d brought. As the bigger man’s hand pumped his cock, drops of sweetly scented oil fell upon his fingers to be spread over his prick by needy fingers, but not needy enough.

“You call that begging?” Cobra remarked with a scoff, recalling how gamely the man had insulted him for the same needy way he now squirmed on the pillows. He picked up a different vial still, this one also warming but not quite as vicious in sensation as the menthol, and coated two fingers which he rubbed teasingly over the man’s asshole. Cobra’s plump lips were quick to snap over the pleading thumb and catch it in his teeth, sucking for a moment before he dragged the bite and left another welt like a signature. “Beg harder,” he instructed gruffly, working his fingertips past the tight muscle but no further, spreading his hole without giving him the depth he craved.

 

SIGVARD -

A mewling, wordless noise left Sigvard, and if he'd only brought his stinging thumb to his own lips instead of dropping his hand to close gently around Cobra's throat, the image of fussy fucking infant would be complete.   
  
With lubrication, his fist had tightened near-painful around his own prick and began to pump wildly. He couldn't help it; he was animal, now, writhing, humping the air in a crude attempt to fuck himself on the slave's fingertips. They  _ belonged _ in him. They were warm, and stiff, and teasing, and it was the only natural thing for him to be full of them. "Oh, gods," he groaned, clenching teeth and pushing his head back into pillows, trying to regain some control of the rest of him. How was he supposed to think about  _ words _ , in a state like this? How was he supposed to think about begging? Every inch of him was humming in pain or pleasure, the menthol, the still-stinging welts, the fingertips pushing into his asshole, the ache in his knees from the tile of the bath. All of his skin was burning with touch, and in his blindness, it tore his mind apart.   
  
" _ Please _ ," he whimpered, spreading his legs a little wider, drawing his thick thighs up and bending at the knees to present himself to the unseeable body above him. "Please, gods," he gasped, " _ Cobra _ ," the name, spoken aloud for the first time, coming out of him like prayer. "Fuck me." His grip around the slave's throat tightened, just barely, as if it could make his whorish body threatening. "Cobra." Like prayer. Like worship. " _ Fuck _ me."

 

COBRA -

A dark grin spread across the man’s lip at the sound. He didn’t need to tell Sigvard that he was acting exactly the same way that Cobra had when he’d been nursing at his cock, but he did anyway. “Who’s mewling now?” He asked smugly, shoving his fingers further into the man’s ass and spreading them as he pumped them in and out. He looked down at his own cock, hard now, and tipped a generous pouring of lube on the tip. He made a show of luxuriantly rubbing the oil over the ladder of piercings, the man’s pleading stroking his ego in the best way. All the while, he fingered the man with merciless teasing, just grazing near the prostate but never giving him the pressure he wanted. No; that would come with his cock. The pause after he removes his fingers was no doubt agonisingly long.

“Better,” the slave said pompously, suddenly pushing his cock a few inches in with a well-practiced movement. As each barbell pushed past the ring of muscle it sent a shiver down his cock that brought out an indulgent moan. Breathing deeply, Cobra used his hands to keep the man from fucking himself on his cock like some kind of wanton slut, smirking down at his panting face. “Say my name more,” He crooned, the gentle request accompanied by another inch shoved into him. “Plead for me.”

 

SIGVARD -

Not that Sigvard ordinarily maintained any dignity, but he couldn’t help but want to snap back at the taunt: Cobra had blue-balled him and poured liquid fire down his cock, and so he felt entitled to  _ mewl _ . It was nothing like before, with the slave shivering as though he’d never had his dick sucked. Or was Hamad not so generous, after all?   
  
Of course, he said none of it. He couldn’t manage it, not when he felt the first inches of Cobra’s prick nose into him, not when he was a shivering puddle in those cushions, his lips alight with a chorus of moans. The sensation of the barbells pushing past his ring had him immediately addicted. His hips writhed in hunger for  _ more _ of it, and in feeling Cobra’s hands holding him still to deny him, he let out a bitter cry that echoed around stone walls.   
  
“Cobra.” Fine, fine. Whatever he wanted. “ _ Please. _ ” Whatever it took to give him more of that perfect pleasure. “Give me more of you.” The hand that held the slave’s throat circled back to rest heavy on his neck, using his weight to pull him closer. “Cobra, I beg of you.” He let go of his prick, then, else this would be over all too quickly. He opened his palm against the slave’s chest in stead, pushing the heel of his palm roughly into the swell of his pectoral, pinching at his nipple between his first two fingers. “Cobra.” Whatever he wanted, whatever he wanted. “Give me all of you.” He was trembling, wanting so madly to take off that blindfold, denying himself the pleasure of it. “Cobra, Cobra.”

 

COBRA -

Leering, Cobra dug his fingers in hard on the man's hips, leaning down to close his teeth around the junction of the man's neck just as the shoved the last of his prick inside the man's hot, squeezing ass. A low moan spilled out from around his gnawing teeth and he pushed his hips hard against the man's buttocks, grinding as if he could somehow get even deeper into the man if he tried. The feeling of the man's walls  tightening around every curve of his was exquisite; and then there were the barbells. Numb, they did not. Cobra let out a hungry, animalistic cry as he drew back and thrust in again, adopting a rhythm of short, hard strokes that had the sound of flesh slapping fill the room.   
  
Snarling and only spurred on more by the begging and the sight of the brilliant hickeys he'd raised on Sig's throat, he thrust  his fingers through his hair and used the leverage to pull his head up into a fierce kiss, suddenly silencing the chanting of his name. He kissed as if the taste of his own name was on the man's tongue, grazing his wanton lips with his teeth and gasping for air in between. "Whore," he cooed to him in between kisses. "You ass takes me so well."

 

SIGVARD -

If Sigvard could think, he might have remembered what Cobra had said about  _ bruises _ and purposefully treated him to some more. Thankfully, violence came to his body like instinct, and made thinking redundant. With the slave's body close, gnashing at his neck, the Northlander's hand was free to drop from the back of his head and circle back to his ass again. He pushed his fingers deep into his flesh there, clawing, and if he wasn't in the habit of chewing his nails to the quick, he might have left something more severe behind than the reddened marks that would bloom to purple and black and yellow in the coming days.   
  
He was so utterly satisfied and so utterly needy, all in the same moment. Hearing Cobra's animal shouting, he hummed after him in hungry echo. Feeling the bones of his pelvis dig into the cushion of his ass, that pale and clawing hand dug  _ deeper _ , drawing him in. The menthol still licked at his skin, and so when Cobra's mouth consumed his own, he nipped at his lips in petty revenge, teasing at first, then  _ biting _ , not quite to drawing blood. The pressure inside him was unbearable, the rocking of that cockhead against his prostate making him dizzied and blinded by starlight and causing all of his nerves to erupt in buzzing pleasure. He couldn't think, couldn't speak, couldn't respond to that derision with anything more than a sharp twist of the nipple he held in his fingertips.

His body rocked against cushions with the force of every thrust into him. He arched his spine, clenched his ass, convulsing and seeking to milk the thick girth inside of him. Like this was his purpose. Like he'd come into heat.   
  
"Cobra," he murmured still, keening. Both hands clawing, now, pushing opposite against his ass and chest, working in injuries in the shape of his fingers. "Please, Cobra." Vague, nonsensical, wanting more of everything. His tongue probed for the slave's until he was breathless and grinning. "Please, please." His voice dropping down to a whisper, awe-filled. " _ God-king _ ."

 

COBRA -

Cobra could scarcely remember the last time he's put so much effort into a lay. And then he could, and the memory made him rut harder. The scented oils and countless cushions were a far cry from the hard, red dirt and open night sky but the clawing, the clawing, the grunting, the biting, the hand around his throat; his mouth opened in a silent scream as he screwed his eyes shut and fucked blind. His body tightened under Sigvard's hands, humping desperately while at the same time trying not to blow his load before he could experience the almost-impossible  _ pulse _ of the bigger man cumming around his cock.    
  
Harder now, grinding, desperately gasping for air behind clenched teeth in an effort not to tip over the edge into climax too early. They hadn't said 'god-king' on that night. They had said something else. He whined in frustration at the memory, mouth parting in a gasp when he was suddenly captured in a kiss and thrown into oblivion all at once. His throbbing prick spurted deep inside the man and Cobra's mind crossed over into blinding, white nothingness that seemed to last for a few moment yet also an eternity. He forgot to breath, the light-headedness stilling his hips and all other moments until he remembered to draw breath with a shuddering gasp followed by a scream, weakly thrusting his hips as the orgasm ebbed away. "Urd," he murmured, the sound quiet before he slumped onto Sigvard's broad chest.

 

SIGVARD -

Silence, then, but for their heaving bodies. Sigvard's skin thrummed with the shadow of that godly pleasure that had cracked through him like thunder; that brief and perfect and violent high that made him cry out and shake and empty himself of rope after rope of thick cum that fell hot on his chest. He rocked his pelvis gently, still, even with Cobra collapsing on top of him. He tightened the muscles of his abdomen, making his softening cock jerk, and closed his walls softly, softly, around the slave's prick. He wanted to remember this, exactly as it was. The girth of him, the strangeness of his piercings, and the wet heat of his load buried deep in him. His thighs closed just barely around Cobra's hips to keep him there. Just a little longer.    
  
His hands were open against the small of the southerner's back, and swept up, now, to his shoulder blades—no cruelty anymore, only gentleness, wicking away sweat from his skin. He rubbed at him there, back and forth, before lifting fingertips to nudge away the blindfold. His eyes kept closed, all the same. The slave's breath, coming rapid, tickled at the skin of his chest. One hand threaded through the curl of Cobra's hair, feeling strands between his thumb and forefinger; the other muscled arm fell heavy around his waist. A hum, deep and low, rumbled through his body. "Stay," he whispered, turning his cheek to the slave's head. A selfish command. Even as exhaustion overtook him, he held out hope that he might wake in the night and have a warm body rather than his hand to fuck. "Sleep at my side tonight."

 

COBRA -

Cobra grimaced as the man's ass tightened around his slowly softening cock, the friction sending a little spasm through his body and making him pound the cushions with his fist. Grunting, he propped himself up enough to grip the base of his cock, pulling it free from the man's ass with a whine. Rightly, they should have bathed after that; even the fabric of his coverall that had pooled around the backs of his knees had been dampened by sweat and his chest was smear with Sigvard's cum. Yet he just couldn't bring himself to do it. It had been a long time since he had enjoyed himself so thoroughly, and Cobra was spent.   
  
"Fine," he conceded with a tired sigh, rolling over onto his side. Groaning quietly, he adjusting his soft cock when it rested against his thigh, kicking his overall off his feet. The slave grumbled somewhat about having the man's heavy arm around his waist but in his current state the best he could was a half-hearted gnaw at the man's chest. "If you tell anyone of this, I'll scalp you. Sigvard," he tacked the man's name onto the end of the threat with a quiet scoff. "What are you doing in Navan, anyway? It can't just be for the sex."

 

SIGVARD -

Gradually, breathing came easier, slower, softer to the Northlander. His body was heavy on his back; he couldn’t be bothered to flinch away from the edge of the slave’s teeth, nor fidget at the unpleasant sensation of cum leaking from him to form a wet spot on the cushions. He hummed again, at the question. His fingertips were counting Cobra’s ribs.   
  
“I’m no longer welcome in my homeland,” he muttered. A convincing enough half-truth. “For some time, now, it’s been that way.” Eyes opened to slivers, watching the ceiling in the moonlight. “I thought I’d come down and live among you people instead.” Truth be told, ever since boyhood, he’d imagined the southern deserts as a paradise of lawlessness and a society of hedonistic pleasures. He’d gotten the latter part right, at least, but he was beginning to realize he’d have some trouble with the former.   
  
His gaze turned to the mess of dark curls atop Cobra’s head at his shoulder. “And you, little thing?” Emptied of the slave’s prick, he didn’t seem to feel the need to preach his name. “Why are you so far from home, shackled up like this?” ‘ _ Home _ ’ he kept ambiguous. It wasn’t yet safe to mention those feverish evenings at the circus, he felt.

 

COBRA -

The indirect phrasing made Cobra scoff. “You are a killer, then,” he said bluntly, not surprised but not impressed, either. It was surprisingly easy to kill once you built up the nerve, and he had that in spades. He should have known, however, that his questions would come back to bite him just as he had bitten Sigvard. He tensed at the question, hated himself for the slip, then climbed up to straddle the man’s midsection with a grunt. Higher ground. Like a goat. Couldn’t be helped.

“The Urdai don’t have a home,” He murmured, eyes narrowed as he looked down at the man. “And I couldn’t stomach being up past the mountains, any more.” And he didn’t belong in the desert. And he didn’t below in the streets. He could have gone to the capital, but that would be fulfilling the wishes of someone he would rather defy. “This is just the easiest place to be,” he sighed, hands reaching down to gently squeeze Sig’s neck. “Hamad may ignore me but he does  _ want _ anything from me, either... at least, not more than a lay.”

  
  


SIGVARD -

A wide grin pushed colour into Sigvard’s cheeks as the slave mounted him, and his lazy hands took up their natural place on Cobra’s hips. He watched his face with some interest, then, as he was educated. Curious, or maybe not, that remaining in the north was something he didn’t have the nerve for.   
  
Feeling Cobra’s light grasp, he tilted his chin back, just barely, to offer him more of his throat. His brow pinched, but not at the mock-threat. Something about this story. He drew his legs up, then, close to the slave’s back; he wouldn’t be able to summon up another erection for some time, but he enjoyed the pretending, and pushed his flaccid length messily against Cobra’s ass. “It doesn’t bore you?” And went on, of course, like it was nothing. If only because it was. “To be a god among these petty creatures.” That sideways smile was as much for the slave’s benefit as his own. ”You strike me as a thing who needs more than a Duke can give you.”

 

COBRA -

Cobra clicked his tongue at the man’s actions; it had been a long time since he’d encountered someone with such an insatiable libido. Hamad was nothing if not efficient, even in his pursuit of pleasure. “Of course I am bored,” he scoffed, the words accompanied by a shrug. It could have been worse; much, much worse. “You have no idea what I’m capable of tolerating in order to survive,” he warned the man, peering ya him in the dim light as he pushed his fingers experimentally into the softer parts of the man’s neck on either side of the windpipe. “I have seen men die in horrible ways. I have been close to death more than once myself. The lap of luxury is far better, even if it is boring.”

 

SIGVARD -

Sig's body shook in quiet laughter. Utterly inappropriate, given the vague horrors on Cobra's lips, but he couldn't help it. They were so far away from death and pain in this place, it was beyond him to try to imagine it. He didn't much want to, either. He concerned himself with death and pain when he was dying or painful, and that was all.   
  
The Northlander's voice came ever so slightly strained—more strained than usual, in any case—but he made no move to shrug off the gentle pressure of the slave's fingertips. "I've never been called that before." Stupid joke. Stupid fucking joke, but a half-bottle of sweet wine and a thorough buggering made him prone to them. "Luxury." Gods, and the look on his face, like he couldn't be more pleased with himself.

 

COBRA -

A furrow formed in Cobra's brow as he realised what the tremors in Sig's body were. "It is funny to you?" he asked, voice gaining a dangerously hard edge. In his sour mood the joke, however amusing, failed to get any response other than disgust. His hands left the man's neck and instead pried the barbarian's grip from him. The sole of Cobra's foot, branded with slave marks, although Sig wouldn't know it, planted quite unnecessarily on his hip, dangerously close to his balls as he clambered off him in a huff.    
  
"Go fuck yourself," he sneered, eyes casting down to the mess on his chest. Grumbling, he moved towards the small wash station set at the dresser, useful to freshen up without taking a full bath, and grunted in frustration when he found the pail empty. Did this false ambassador not even employ a 5-copper chamber maid?! Even the palace servants should have accommodated him. Oh, he paused, eyes flicking back to the tray of stuffed figs spiked with feverweed on the table. That was right; he'd instructed them to leave it dry on purpose. With a heavy sigh, he knocked the metal pail onto the floor, although the loud  _ clang _ did little to improve his mood. "Were you ever a solider, before this? Or just a petty criminal?" he asked, staring out at the ocean.

 

SIGVARD -

" _ Petty _ ," Sigvard tutted, although the injury in his voice was only mocking. Surprises, it seemed, never seemed to end with the slave; he'd expected to  _ bore _ the thing with his sleepy humour, not strike so much of a nerve. He pushed himself to his elbows, wondering if he ought to pacify the moody creature. Wondering, wondering.   
  
"I travelled for weeks under the name of an ambassador who shits more gold than I see in a year,"  he carried on. With a laborious effort and a grunt to match, he managed to wade out of the pile of cushions and to his feet. "I dined at Hamad's table." Bending at the waist to snatch up the bottle he'd discarded for a nap, he brought it to his lips and emptied half of the remaining contents. "I met a god." The sound of naked feet on stone. " _ Fucked _ a god." He moved his body close to Cobra's, though far enough away that they wouldn't share heat. "I'm doing a sight better than  _ petty _ , I think." His arm outstretched, he knocked the cool glass of the bottle against the man's back in silent offering of it. "I was a soldier too, yes."

 

COBRA -

Cobra's eyes narrowed as the bigger man drew closer and much like his namesake, his muscles tightened in readiness to spring should his movements seem any kind of threat at all. They weren't though; just footsteps. Just the cool press of a bottle against his back. He didn't take it, but he didn't attack, either. If anything, he grew despondent. The more and more he heard it, the less likely it seemed that he was a god. He didn't feel much like a god at all, in this place. It was a bittersweet irony that he had felt most like a deity in one of the worst places he had been; dressed in green and gold with hundreds of eyes upon him. The circus.   
  
"Then it surprises me," he rounded on the man with a grimace. "That you treat the horrors of death and mutilation with such  _ irreverence _ . Or were you really a noble's son who never saw combat, like a real ambassador?" 

 

SIGVARD -

Sigvard’s lips parted, then closed, and before he could push out the utterly exhausted sigh that was bursting in his chest, he tipped the bottle to his mouth again. As he emptied it, he turned on his heel towards the table. He’d spied stuffed figs. Figs would delight him, now, in ways that Cobra wouldn’t. “Maybe we’ve seen different sorts of horrors, love.” No doubt, with those piercings. Still, the slave spoke of  _ combat _ . “Or would you have me grieve for every man I’ve gutted in the mud?” His fingers hovered over the plate, selecting the fattest one. “Should I cower when I wake from bleeding in the ditch, or should I carry on, hm?”

 

COBRA -

“Yes, I expect we have,” Cobra relief coldly, watching the man drift away. It was not unusual for men to drift away like this when he got into one of his moods, but this time there was the the pleasant fact that he was drifting towards a plate of poison, so Cobra followed, taking up a seat by the balcony railing. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he scolded. “I don’t expect you to act like a fool, but I do expect you to know pain. To understand what fear feels like.” Perhaps the man would know it sooner than expected. Feverweed wasn’t deadly but it was unpleasant. Children used tiny doses of it to avoid seeing their tutors. At the concentration in the figs, however, Sigvard could be reduced to sweating wretch with flaming skin, depending on how much he stuffed his face. Cobra certainly made no move to stop him. 

 

SIGVARD -

The Northlander’s fair head rocked back and forth in a gesture that was meant to dismiss Cobra’s fixation on ... what, technicalities? What made him think Sigvard didn’t know pain, precisely? Or fear? He would have asked these things aloud, were it not for the meaty fruit and cheese and honey on his tongue, complicating speech.   
  
Something seemed to occur to him, quite suddenly. Perhaps it wasn’t about what Sig knew or didn’t know, hm? As if to pretend his face had never been creased in a sharp frown, his features and his voice both softened as he swallowed. “What is it that pains you?” Sympathy was clumsy, all wrong in his mouth, but earnest. Having remembered he was an honoured guest and therefore entitled to the whole plate, he’d plucked up another fig. “Tell me, little thing. What are you afraid of? What horrible ways have you seen men die?“ Tucking the fruit past his lips, he watched the slave, steady.

 

COBRA -

It was annoying when people figured out the core of his motivation was pain. If Cobra hadn't been so starved of social interaction for years, perhaps he would have brushed the foreigner off like he had so many other times before. Instead, he paused. Not to stop the man from taking a second fig; by now, he'd be feeling the sweat come on in a matter of minutes, but to ponder just how much of himself he was prepared to give up to this mysterious, ill-moraled Sigvard.   
  
"Sometimes it feels like too many things to put into words," he murmured, running his fingers through his hair with a frown. Contortion was not a talent; it was a skill earned through hours of grueling training that had been expedited by a Northern man's own maniacal cruelty. Cobra avoided the finer details, unaware that Sig had once been in the audience of the circus he'd been born in. "I have been tied up to the point of breaking and left alone in the dark more times than I can count. When I was allowed to sleep, it was in shackles. When I was made to fuck, it was under the influence of smelling salts. And yet," a stuttered huff of air pushed out of his throat, his eyes wide with memory. "I was treated kindly in comparison. I still remember all the times I saw men's faces burned for mere entertainment."

 

SIGVARD -

Well, now he didn’t feel much like eating. Sigvard nudged the tray away from himself, finding the savoury-sweet aroma newly sickening, and sat heavy at the low table. He took a long breath. Something stirred in the core of him, but he ignored the sensation, feeling that it would soon pass. “I haven’t seen any horrors like those,” he admitted. His horrors were simple; the usual,  _ comfortable _ violence of skirmishes or raids or alleyway murder.   
  
Feeling like there was nothing to say (what would a gentle soul do here? apologize? promise to whisk him away?), he only watched the slave’s eyes with understanding, inasmuch as he’d ever understand. “Hamad did this?” That stirring sensation wasn’t leaving him, but rather growing louder. “Or was it the...” He waved his hand, as if to complete his thought while he attended to a pain in his chest, not uncommon when he gorged himself as he had done all night. “Before?” Unspecific. He grimaced, eyes on Cobra’s again. “I should admit, I think, that I know a little about you.” Oh, and now began that awful feeling where the air wouldn’t wick away his heat quite quickly enough. His thinking was growing clumsier. “I would see you. As a boy, I would watch you perform.”

 

COBRA -

Cobra had expected as much. Battle was gruesome, but warfare was waged by men in positions of power who constructed forces made of many pawns. Seldom was it ever personal, a one-on-one, hate-filled feud with no hope of winning without the most drastic of measures. For the briefest moment, he felt almost calm. "No," he shook his head, even managing a faint laugh. "Of course not Hamad. I would never stay here if it had been him."    
  
Then the calm washed away as quickly as it had come, like an ebbing tide. The man's eyes grew wide and wary and his limbs tightened, this time not out of readiness to strike, but fear. A deep, shuddering breath. A boy, he'd said. General admission. Too young for the late night tent. "You're lucky," he murmured, voice like a ghost's. "The last man to tell me that died." Was killed, he meant; by his own hand no less. It was difficult to articulate with his heart hammering in his chest. Then, confusion followed, for he had known all this time and yet made no mention of it, no attempt to push his body into the shapes he knew it could achieve like so many men were wont to do. That behaviour had probably saved his life.   
  
"The poison isn't fatal, you know," he piped  up, and this information was more of a mercy than SIgvard could understand in that moment, but he would understand in time. Slowly, he unfurled his limbs, crawling closer with curiosity lacing the haunted expression in his eyes. "It's just suffering in a bottle. Maybe you can understand why I do this." He reached out and put the back of his hand to Sig's forehead, nodding in confirmation at the raised temperature. 

 

SIGVARD -

Whatever it was that plagued Sigvard's body was some ways away from unbearable. There was the nagging heat, of course, down to his fingertips, no part of him untouched; there was the first tickle of sweat on the small of his back and everywhere skin met skin. But he could tolerate it, yet, and so like any other mysterious and troublesome ailment, he elected to largely ignore it.   
  
It wouldn't occur to him what was happening until he heard the word  _ poison _ on Cobra's lips. Even then, having convinced himself that this was all put down to something at Hamad's table disagreeing with his northern constitution, it was some moments of silence before he fully realized the slave's meaning.   
  
As expected, the information that the substance wasn't  _ deadly _ came as no comfort to him now.   
  
His eyes went wide. In a crushing grip, he snatched Cobra's wrist, and stood—he knew he would have to stand and take action while he still could. "What have you done?" Unfortunately, all this moving around and blinding panic had the effect of making everything so much worse, so much quicker. His skin was fire. Open-mouthed gasps didn't remedy a thing. Nor did holding his breath. He would have to fight through it, then, if he wanted to kill this little beast. What had he done, what had he done?   
  
He hauled the slave to the ground, and fell on top of him, the sound of flesh on stone. Hissing, whimpering pain, scrambling to wrap his hands around his poisoner's throat.

 

COBRA -

Blue eyes widened as the grip tightened around his wrist. He had forgotten that the man was dangerous, for Sig had spent the whole night rolling over for him, and now he was caught tight with no leverage. Grimacing, he pulled against the grip, feeling something close to disgust. “Of course you wouldn’t understand,” he snarled, defiance in his eyes. He fell under the bigger man with a yelp, nude body squirming under He sweat-slick heat of Sig’s fever. “Get off me!” He barked. “Don’t be such a child! It’s only feverweed!” There were far worse things that Cobra had in his arsenal that he could have given the man. He had thought that the feverweed would be a good place to start on account of the Northlander’s preference for cold weather.

“Stop fighting it,” he carried on grimly, the tendons of his throat flexing against the man’s hands. “You’re supposed to let it wash through you. It goes more easily that way.”

 

SIGVARD -

Wild-eyed, Sig switched his grip to push his thumbs into the slave’s windpipe, putting more of his weight against the writhing body. Heaving, a mournful groan burrowed up from his throat. He needed relief. More than he needed vengeance, he needed respite from this awful fever. He could slaughter this wiggling thing later.   
  
Summoning up saliva—and it wasn’t hard, after enjoying those damned figs—he spat violently into Cobra’s face and shoved off of him. He was clumsy, searching the room: He found the bottle of wine empty, of course, and so he threw it to shatter on the stone near the slave. The pail at the dresser had been tipped, never having been filled in the first place, and so he roared his frustration.   
  
There was only one other place he knew that would have the promise of cool water, enough to surround his burning body, enough to drown in. So, bare-assed, he tore streaking out of the room and towards the bath.

 

COBRA -

When the thumbs pressed into Cobra's throat, he started to see flowers. White blossoms overlayed his vision, not eclipsing it but showing faintly, almost like a threat. He didn't like that; didn't like the idea of visions, didn't like the lumbering soldier's audacity to put him through such an experience. He opened his mouth to snarl and caught a fleck of spit from the disgusting glob that hit his cheek. Coughing, then screeching with rage, he all but chased the man out of the room before he had the sense to stop before he tore his meticulously crafted reputation to shreds by sprinting naked through the halls.    
  
Shrinking back into the room, brooding, he wiped the slag from his face with the back of his hand and flicked it onto the floor. He summoned a servant to fetch others to clean; by the time the man came back it would be as if nothing had happened at all, from poisoned figs to cum-stained cushions. But Cobra would be seeing him before then. Slipping back into the overall, it wasn't hard to wander down the halls and find the bath the man had ended up in: he'd only needed to question some startled guards. His eyes cast down on the man wallowing in the cool waters of the bath with something close to disdain.   
  
"You are a fool," he said, pulling at the ties of his overall and slipping out of it again. He had cum on his chest to clean too, after all. "The running would have made it worse. Now you have learned nothing, and you have experienced the fever in entirely the wrong way. I've seen children take it better than you." Sitting at the edge of the bath, he dipped his feet in the water and scooped some up with his hands so that he could wash his chest. "I suppose all your talk of gods was just to get a lay, then," he commented coldly.

 

SIGVARD -

Sigvard was up to his cheeks in water, his nose a half-inch above the surface so as to breathe. Periodically, he'd submerge to soothe his burning scalp, and he found he had to move from place to place in order to keep the water from warming too much around him. He was quiet, watching Cobra join him. The reddened whites of his eyes, startling and sickly against the pale blue irises that tracked the slave's every movement, said quite enough.   
  
His gaze flicked to Cobra's feet. Too far away to reach. Sig could have moved a little ways back, dipped under, and pushed off the wall—but no, no, the man would have time to flee before he could drag him under. In maddening impotence, he dipped into the water again, raked his fingers through his hair, and came up.   
  
"If you are a god, you're the worst sort," he snapped over the rippling surface. "Pointlessly cruel and too feeble to control your people. In my country, our heroes kill gods like you." Only he hadn't meant to sound so much like a  _ boy _ , there. Nevertheless, talking was doing something to diminish his rage. Closing his eyes, he turned his back to the slave and moved in hopes of finding a cooler place in the water.   
  
"I told you I'd let you do whatever you wanted," he murmured. "You might give me some warning, next time." Or have the foresight to bind him, at any rate, unless he was suicidal.

 

COBRA -

The man’s words grated on Cobra’s temper but he managed to keep his composure for a reply. “Well, your country  _ made _ me, so perhaps I am a curse your people deserve,” he sneered. Wrinkling his nose in a huff, he carried on washing the rest of his body, feeling better for being clean.

“I won’t,” he replied briskly, blue eyes locking on to Sig’s petulant gaze. “That is not the lesson. It is pointless to warn you about what is coming when I am trying to make you understand the terror of feeling unsafe in all places.” Sighing, he slipped off the edge of the pull, submerging himself and surfacing again, pushing his dark curls back, away from his face. “No one is prepared to suffer for the things they idolise these days, it seems.”

 

SIGVARD -

The second body in the water made Sigvard feel claustrophobic, suddenly; in his exploration of the bath, he steered gently away from the ripples from Cobra's movements lapping up against him.   
  
Hearing the slave talk of  _ idols _ , he barked a laugh, humourless. "I'm suffering your lecture, to start." Lids lifted by half to watch the water around him, to catch any sudden moves. "Anyway, you didn't warn me about the fever, and evidently I missed whatever I was supposed to have been taught—notice doesn't seem to have made any difference." He was wary now, yes, but he was wary of men he'd fought in the pub the night prior, and of wild animals, and of door frames he'd once stubbed his toe on. "And why should I suffer for you, hm? What's in it for me? You have a pretty cock, love, but one good fuck is hardly enough to put me off snapping your neck the next time you get it in your head to poison me."

 

COBRA -

Gods, the man was such a child. Perhaps the reason he’d been so willing to bend over for Cobra’s studded cock was due to inexperience in fucking a man. The snide thought crossed Cobra’s mind as he washed his own soft prick, fingers carefully washing around the studs. He would have asked Sig to do it if he wasn’t in such an obviously treacherous mood.

“Perhaps next time I’ll use something that makes your cock painfully hard yet unbearable to touch,” Cobra glowered. “Such a thing exists, you know. Poisons to numb, to paralyse, to make you sleep for seven days... I learned a lot about malicious substances during my years. You could learn how to recognise them and understand what they do, if you weren’t such a spoiled child.”

 

SIGVARD -

A low chuckle fell from his lips and across the water; his amusement, this time, genuine. The bath had done its job in soothing his symptoms somewhat, and the conversation was beginning to temper his attitude.   
  
"So what? So that I might make my enemies' dicks hard?" He shook his head. "Not good enough." He could learn these things from an herbalist, and enjoy the benefit of them not turning their tricks on him. Or he could hire one. Or he could carry on with his blade, which had suited him well so far. He was wading to the pool's edge furthest from Cobra, now, where he'd turn to rest his back against stone.   
  
"I could make a mutt of myself for you, Cobra." They were wandering into holy territory again, and so he'd speak the name like reading scripture. "An adoring subject, a disciple, over which you have free reign. Uncomplaining of your terrors. Grateful for them. I could give that to you." A sideways smile cracked his lips. "And my mouth. Remember how it made you whimper." And his ass, which seemed to make an animal of him. "What would you give me, my loving, doting god?" He'd called him  _ spoiled _ . Yes, yes, he did enjoy that idea. "How would you spoil me?"

 

COBRA -

Cobra drew in a deep breath through his nose. It was rare that he encountered a man so bull-headed that it was Cobra who was the reserved and mature one.  "With that attitude, you'll never become a force of fear. You will remain a brute who thinks with his cock and his fists," he scolded the man, pushing off the wall and swimming closer. He had little regard for how uncomfortable his presence seemed to make Sig right now, and he interlocked his forearms with the other man's, grip settling near his elbows. Leaning up close, small chips in the pale teeth that made up his grimace were visible.    
  
"You make the mistake of thinking I am only concerned with pleasure," he said, pulling the man closer in a way that countered his dismissive tone. "That I enjoy stagnating in this harem. Even with you in it, as if Hamad would ever allow it, I would come to hate you in a way that does not make for good fucking." Close enough now, he nipped at the man's jawline as if that would bring him to his senses. "I want power," he murmured. "A single follower is not enough. I want to  _ destroy _ something,  _ change _ something. A man once told me I must go to the capital, and I cursed him for it but each know I know a little more that it must be true."

 

SIGVARD -

It was a good thing, then, that the Northlander had no interest in being a force of fear. Truth be told, he found the slave's imagery of Sig among the Duke's harem to be  _ much _ more entertaining; he was close to laughter, and would have enjoyed dwelling on the idea of being a special foreign treat for cock-hungry ambassadors. Nevermind the irony.   
  
Teeth pinching skin had his attention, in the same way he attended to a mosquito. He watched Cobra's face with interest; but with the burden, too, of everything he was proposing. Planning, and careful escape, and the tireless work of not being recognized once there. It was too much. This evening had been too long already.   
  
His body was limp in the slave's grasp; neither protesting nor engaging in whatever little game he was playing. "So you would poison me with all manner of things, at any time, without notice, although I've said I'd happily endure your tortures given some warning.  _ And _ you would have me risk life and limb seeing you to the capital to kick off your campaign?" A long breath filled his lungs, then emptied them. "This is sounding like a worse and worse deal for me, little thing. So will it be one follower, or would you prefer none at all? What do you offer me?"

 

COBRA -

With no protest, the smaller man clambered onto the other, hooking his legs around his waist and clinging tight enough to press their chests together. "You are fickle," he told the man, taking his face into his hands. "You call me a god so willingly yet blanch at making a sacrifice. Here I am offering you knowledge, skills; something closer to a position of power than a lowborn soldier could ever dream of, and what?" He laughed, using his thumbs to move the flesh of Sigvard's cheeks back and forth mockingly. "You'd rather be my pet? A braindead whore? Unbelievable."    
  
Leaning his head up, he nipped at the man's cheek, in the same place where the brute had spat upon him earlier. "It would be much sweeter to sink my cock into you knowing that I have achieved my ambitions," he purred into his ear, touch turning tender, rubbing gently over the sore spots he'd raised over the man's face. "Excitement is so much better when it is earned. If it is truly the warning you take issue with, I can give it to you, but it will take you longer to learn how to be alert."

 

SIGVARD -

Sigvard's hands fell under the slave's thighs, cradling him dutifully where he sat. He smiled, faintly, at the mocking; his head shook fainter still. The promise of excitement was nice. The lesson... he'd consider. But it was all some ways off, still.   
  
"You've been alone too long," he murmured, vague. His chin turned to chase the slave's lips with his own; he didn't quite catch them, but stayed close enough to feel his own whispering breath. "A man comes to you and gives you his life, and he asks: 'What do you offer in return?'" They'd been talking too long about godship. He was tired to the point of delirium, and he was failing to separate dream from reality. His mind hadn't yet made up whether or not he'd leave tomorrow, and never see this deranged and utterly unimportant slave again—or if he'd stand at his side, now, at the beginning and maybe the end of an ill-advised conquest.   
  
"And  _ you _ say," here, his hushed voice took on the patience of a tutor, " _ 'What do you want?' _ " He had no business saying these things aloud. The slave, chest-on-chest, would feel his heartbeat quicken. "You only need to ask him: 'What do you want?' Hm? And just like that, he tells you." He had no  _ business _ saying these things! His head shook at his own wrenching conscience, and he hauled Cobra higher on his body to rest his forehead on his cheek. He couldn't blame his fever on the poison.   
  
"I want to go home." Every word tired, like the admission took decades off his life. "I want to go home." Not any easier the second time. "I want to return to a country where I am not a felon, where I am not pursued." A heavy breath, then, as though even as he stood in the pool, sleep was claiming him. "When we've delivered you to power, will you give that to me?"

 

COBRA -

The faintest whimper pushed out of the slave's throat as their chest connected and his own pulse quickened in kind. Selfish, his lips sucked quickly at the air, stealing it from the other without connecting in the kiss that he suddenly felt drawn to. His own fault. His own fault for trying a tender hand. A quiet grumble followed the burning forehead on his cheek but he did not pull away, frowning at the lesson learned. Cobra was wise enough to see his error in thinking so little of the man's own agenda but he was also too proud to admit it, so he forged ahead.    
  
"I have no care for the Northlands," he murmured, hands pushing back to trace lines in the brute's blond hair. "All they remind me of is the sting of the whip and the soul-staining grime of a thousand sins. But if that is what you want," he sighed. "If you want to taste the snow again, sink your feet into the mud of those hollow-tree roads after the rains come, I can help you. I can snub out all who would point fingers at you, and you may walk freely again, just as the Urdai walk the desert. Does that inspire you?" he asked, brow furrowed. "Does that make you determined?" 

 

SIGVARD -

The slave’s carefully crafted imagery made Sigvard thoroughly heartsick; and so, when all that and more was promised to him, the feeling that overtook him in mind and body and soul—he didn’t have the words for it. Better than stuffed figs. Better, even, than that frantic fuck among the cushions. His lips curled into a broad smile, and he pushed grateful kisses to the southerner’s neck, his jaw, his chin. “More than inspired,” he nodded. “I am devoted to him, my loving god, my wrathful god, Cobra.”   
  
His eyes, alight with new fire, looked up to match the man’s. “For all that, you needn’t give me warning of your poisons or your tricks.” A concession he’d come to regret, he was sure. But it was only fair: He didn’t warn the man before snatching his lips with his own in a greedy kiss, now, and certainly not before he allowed his own knees to give out, letting both their bodies plunge in a straight drop into the water.

 

COBRA -

Cobra's eyes closed at the attentions to his neck, humming softly in appreciation even though the words were slightly troubling. "I am not a god," he murmured. "Yet." His blue eyes opened and met Sig's gaze with a sense of resolve that made his chest swell. And then his mouth was consumed, the kiss swallowing the moan from his throat and dispelling it into the void as he melted into a melding of tongues and reassurances about his reign over the man's thick body. As they plunged into the water, he held on for a moment, lost in the feeling, continuing to kiss the man even though it made his head swoon.   
  
A tree. That was what he saw; not any tree or wood or even sculpture, though; this one was fresh, red and gleaming wet, carved shallow but terrifyingly broad upon the surface of someone's stomach. The vision made his heart lurch, forcing him away from the man up to the surface for air. Gasping for breath, he flicked water away from his face like a dog shaking. Cobra swallowed the wail that built up inside him, turning to the blond with an uncertain frown. Of course, it wouldn't be easy for either of them. He had his own fears about the endeavour that would keep him up at night without the assistance of wine.   
  
"I am tired," he murmured, feeling the need for sleep in more than just his flesh. "Let us... return to your room. We can discuss this further after some rest." 

 

SIGVARD -

"Dress," Sigvard hummed, nodding. Entirely unaware that there was anything the matter, he floated closer to Cobra's body, fingertips skimming flesh. "I'll carry you."


	3. Snake Bite

SIGVARD -

 

Daylight was ruinous. The Northlander's body would have been content to sleep for an eternity, to match the eternity that had been the night prior; but the sun, washing over the terrace, through the posts that guarded the balcony and to his bed among the cushions, wouldn't permit it.

Granted, his dreams hadn't been merciful, either. His mind's eye saw the circus. Mountains. The ambassador lying in a ditch. A made-up alley in what he thought to be the southern capital; fleeing, he turned to see three tan faces screeching after him. Cobra, and Hamad, and the likely mother of his son.   
  
The burn of light through his eyelids made him fuss and press into the body next to him, using the heavy arm he'd draped over the southerner's waist to tug him closer. He tucked his face against the dark curl of Cobra's hair, bringing him some illusion of  _ night _ again, and let out a long sigh. No use. Some manner of fucking bird was chirping shrill at the rail of the balcony. Anyway, his cock was stirring. Not all his dreams had been nightmarish.   
  
Lazy, half-hearted, perfectly ready for the southerner to tell him to fuck off—out of bed, out of Navan entirely, and damned be their plans for change and destruction—he rocked closer still. "May I fuck you?" He dropped his head to kiss at his bare shoulder. Fingertips walked down Cobra's ribs, then up again to brush his thumb over his dark nipple. "Or have you grown tired of men filling you up?" An earnest question. He couldn't imagine the man's life as a slave, much less the life before, which he'd caught a glimpse of in their nighttime conversation. Had he suffered too much boring, breathless rutting? Too many hands snatching at his hair, barking derision down at him?   
  
He remembered to open his eyes, suddenly; to draw a little back, and admire the start of a dozen bruises he'd inflicted on the thing. He traced at them, now, with blunt fingertips. Over his back, over his hips. "Or I could roll over for you again, hm?"

 

COBRA -

Sigvard was not the only man to be haunted that night. Already dozing off by the time he allowed the larger man to take him in his arms, Cobra dreamt of fire. Red, gold orange; even blue in places, yet it was not the burning wreckage of the circus that troubled him. Miraculous flames on burnt-orange sands, seemingly fueled by nothing at all. A blaze that circled his throat yet did not burn, but then it did, but then it didn't, but then it did again. On and on it went. Circular footsteps in the sand. Shackles. An acrobat's hoop.    
  
_ Urd _   
  
He startled awake at someone nosing in his hair, eyes flying wide as his grip tenses on the arm that held him. He relaxed after a moment, getting his bearings. The fish room. Of course; he'd never retired to his own chambers. He would bribe the servants to say otherwise.    
  
Cobra grunted softly at the feeling of the man's prick slowly coming to life against the backs of his thighs. The request earned a quiet chuckle. "Perhaps, from behind," he answered coyly, parting his lips to catch the half-hard prick between his thighs. "You'd be surprised. So many men were preoccupied with taking my cock instead of my ass. Others, they just wanted to touch... especially when..." His voice trailed off, legs tensing for a moment in their slow, gentle rubbing. The contortion, of course. The memory of many hands gliding over his chest and belly, stretched almost impossibly taut, curling around the exposed length of his throat and coaxing him to take a cock. A hundred times more intimate than when a lover's limbs were normally arranged. That had been the appeal that drew in men and their coppers, right?   
  
"From behind," he murmured, dipping one shoulder and offering up the junction of his neck to Sigvard's wide mouth. He cursed softly as the thought occurred to him. "I don't know where the servants put the oil vials."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander closed his mouth against the skin offered to him, pushing his fat tongue against it, then suckling with a long, lazy self-indulgence. Parting, he inspected the angry red brand he'd left behind. He found a space next to it, under the corner of the southerner's jaw, and did it again.   
  
"Don't fret," he cooed. Outside of the sharp attentions of his mouth, his movements were soft—a slow roll of his hips to push his prick into Cobra's thighs, fingers tousling gently in his hair, a hand sweeping warmth over his chest. He kissed at the shell of the man's ear. "I heard some in your overalls." The southerner would have felt him smile. "Or were those all poisons?" The fever was distant memory, now. He could pretend it hadn't made him dying-frantic. "Don't fret, don't move." His thumb pressed in a line down the center of Cobra's abdomen, dipping into his navel, and fingers nudged into the hair at the base of his prick.   
  
And then it retreated, as did his mouth, as did the rest of him as he pushed himself up. "I'll find them, hm?" The dresser, likely. "You, touch yourself. Show me where you'd like my mouth and hands to be."

 

COBRA -

 

A faint cry escaped Cobra's lips and for a moment he seemed to be more interested in squirming under the attentions of Sigvard's mouth than anything else. With a furrow in his brow he cracked open his eyes as he tried to recall the contents of his overall. "Hmm, no feverweed," he murmured, unable to keep the fretting out of his voice despite the blond's reassurances. His head had barely cleared the realm of sleep. "Powdered Prialilly... jasmine oil... essence of shankroot..." The last thing he wanted smeared on his asshole was essense of shankroot, which caused sharp, shooting muscular spasms. Grimacing, the slave rose up onto his knees, reaching out. "Let me check them... uh," he clammed up, then, at the request to put on a show. Falling back into the cushions, he bit his lip, conflicted, before spreading his thighs almost cautiously.    
  
"Do you know what jasmine smells like?" he asked, his voice gaining a softer edge once his hand was slowly pumping his cock, coaxing it to hardness. It was  a fair question; he wasn't sure if it grew in the north. "Shankroot has almost no smell at all. It's flavourless as long as the essence is prepared correctly. I... want oil," he said decisively, his own two fingers grazing over his puckered hole but making no effort to push in unassisted. He didn't  _ need _ it; he'd had far rougher fucks many times before and lived, but  _ wanted _ , oh yes he did.

 

SIGVARD -

 

"I don't know it," Sigvard said, evidently oblivious to the fact that the pretty white blooms he'd seen in the pots about his room the night before were exactly the thing. And that the tea that had been left for him, which he'd utterly ignored in favour of wine, was jasmine. It didn't matter. He collected three vials from where they'd sat, predictably, on the dresser; and one by one, on his way back to the bed, began to smell at them.   
  
Falling to his knees at the southerner's feet, he  _ recoiled _ at the pungent menthol, closed it up, and tossed it into the puddle of Cobra's garment on the floor. Two, next, and he had to take some care in comparing: One like citrus, the other sweet and rich in a way that made him coo. Replacing the cap on whatever sort of damage was in that lemony bottle, he tossed the (hopefully) jasmine oil towards the man for him to double check.   
  
"Of course you do," he puzzled, giving Cobra a chance to find the vial with his fingers before crawling over him. "Do men commonly fuck you without oil?" It was inconceivable to him. Life on the road got hard, of course, but there was always a bit of animal grease to be found. Fair hair falling around his cheeks, he dropped his mouth to claim the southerner's. His arm lifted, curling around Cobra's head where it lay and sinking fingers into his hair to feel the strands. His tongue was hungry, probing, until he would be all the man tasted. His free hand collected his studded prick, and thumbed over the slit.   
  
Affording the thing some room to breathe, he worked kisses down his chin, under it, pressing soft lips to his shivering windpipe. " _ 'From behind,' _ I know, I know," he hummed. He'd met his share of men who wouldn't have it any other way. "I promise. Let me have a little fun, first."

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra peered at the vials in confusion. Menthol oil? He could smell it from here. Where was his powdered Prialilly, then? It would not be the first time it had gone missing; it was valuable stuff to almost any man within the palace. Grumbling, he took the vial that was given to him and popped the cap, relaxing as the telltale scent of jasmine soothed his nose. He slathered with fingers with the stuff, easily able to work the digits into his hole thanks to his flexible body. He pumped his fingers in and out up to the second knuckle with a soft moan, leaning up to meet the northerner’s mouth keenly. With the taste of Sig on his lips he offered up his throat just as eagerly, body arching as he pushed his fingers even deeper into himself.

 

“Fun,” he nodded breathlessly, the word meant to be an agreement. “Just keep going.” Bucking his hips up into Sig’s hand for good measure, Cobra hummed in pleasure as a talented thumb played with his slit. “More.”

 

SIGVARD -

 

A moan rumbled like thunder in Sigvard's chest, humming where his lips met Cobra's flesh. He kept his movements soft, still. Parting his lips against the man's throat, sighing like it took everything in him not to take it, and take the rest of him, too; the knuckle of his thumb circling over his cockhead, nudging into the barbells at the top of his ladder.   
  
It crossed his mind to haul the southerner's legs over his shoulders, to lift his ass off the ground and force him to rest on his upper back while Sig made better use of his mouth between his legs. He'd done it to plenty of little things before, and they all seemed to be thrilled by it. Thankfully, this was one of those special occasions where the Northlander gave some thought to his actions: He remembered the way Cobra had seized up at his mention of the circus, he remembered  _ tied up to the point of breaking. _ Best leave him like this, then, in full control of that beautiful body. He seemed to be enjoying himself well enough, anyway.

 

Sigvard's wandering mouth moved lower, dipping his tongue into the well of Cobra's collarbone, sucking marks into his chest. He found his nipple, finally, and plucked at it with his teeth, and nursed at the hardening nib with a rolling tongue, sucking until it was swollen and soft in his mouth.   
  
His body, between the southerner's legs, settled closer between his thighs. He was stroking, stroking, lazy and soft. His free hand creeping up, pawing crudely at the flesh of his hip, tweaking the nipple that was starved for his mouth's attention, opening wide to smooth over his neck. Two blunt fingertips nudging their way past Cobra's bottom lip. "Play nicely," he commanded, lowly; moving his heavy head to suckle at the man's opposite nipple, humming delighted into it. His stroking hand opened, the weight of the southerner's cock in his palm. A moment of  _ cruel bastard, _ maybe. But he dipped his body  _ lower _ , feeling studs against his own chest, in the valley between the swell of hard muscle. He pressed the thick cock into his own mass, and stroked it there, harder, faster, and hummed deeply again.

  
  


COBRA -

 

The thumb over the tip of his cock made Cobra forget what time it was, along with most other things. Sinking back into the cushions, although many over them had been pushed away in the night by their restlessly sleeping bodies, he reached for the man but was unable to get his hands any further than his back.  Fingernails briefly dug into the pale skin before the delightful tugging at his nipples made him hum and rub over the sore spots with his fingertips. When the fingers pressed past his plump lips he nursed them as told, grazing his teeth lightly against the sensitive fingertips as if to remind him that he had them. A threat that he didn't entirely intend to make good on, at least not when Sigvard was making him feel like this. He pushed them out of his mouth with his tongue to speak.   
  
"Are you a woman, now?" he chuckled, cock rubbing against the man's chest in a crude parody of the way he'd seen women service men. His smooth legs hooked around the man, ankles finding holds against his thick thighs, just under the swell of his buttocks. The maneuver, combined with the weight on his chest, pulled his oiled fingers from him, pinning his arm behind his back. The slave whined in complaint, body arching with a fierce intensity.    
  
"No," he growled, feeling his hole twitch without the satisfaction of being stretched. "Fill me," he demanded, the fingers of his free hand pushing roughly into blond hair. "Fuck me."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard's body straightened, lifting Cobra some inches off of the cushions by the man's grip in his fair hair, gritting his teeth against the pain until the southerner saw sense to release him. Wordless, he reached behind himself to snatch the man's ankles in iron grips; he brought them around his front and held them together, ruining his nimble, squirming balance and making him look much like an infant ready to be powdered. One hand was enough to pin the both of them to his own stomach, that his other hand might be free to come down violently against Cobra's thick ass. And again, and again.   
  
Hands on the fussy thing's hips, then. Heaving him up and wrestling with his body to flip him over,  _ from behind _ , giving him no freedom nor time to rearrange himself before pulling him to his knees. The northerner's body fell over him, then, chest on his back, mouth at the nape of his neck, hips pushing his hard cock against any bit of hot flesh it could find. His breaths were ragged, his teeth nipping at the shell of Cobra's ear. One hand to hold himself up, the other to snap to the base of his prick and guide it, slowly,  _ softly _ into the oiled heat of his godling's hole.

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra grunted as his body was pulled up, keeping his grip in Sigvard's hair for as long as possible, if only out of malice for the fact that his demands weren't immediately met. What happened next, however, was something he never would have expected; the ample curve of his ass stung under the blow of Sig's palm and a gasp pushed out of him rather than in when he realised that he was being spanked. Snarling, really struggling then, his face turned the same shade of red as his rump out of indignation. When he thought he'd finally gained leverage in the wrestling, he was wrong; he was merely being flipped. With barely enough time to collect his thoughts he pushed himself up onto hands and knees and then all of a sudden, the frantic wrestling slowed to an agonisingly slow pace that had the little would-be deity screaming profanities.   
  
"Bastard!" he snarled, still feeling the glowing heat in his buttocks. "Cunt!  _ Ugh _ \--" in his defiance, he had shoved himself back onto the man's cock. The sudden feeling of fullness when he had barely prepared himself took the wind out of his and rendered him mute. Suddenly, the channel tightened like a vice, for Cobra was incredibly wary that the sadistic Northerner might take the opportunity to ream him before he was ready. Grimacing, his back arched as he pushed himself flush into the man, almost sitting in his lap now.    
  
"Cunt," he repeated the word softly, reaching back to tug at his hair again. Despite himself, he rocks his hips gently as his body began to adjust to the intrusion, whimpering with interest at the pressure on his prostate. "Sigvard..."

 

SIGVARD -

 

With the little beast taming himself on Sigvard's cock, the northerner looped his arm around his body, pulling him along as he rocked back to sit on his heels. His hand opened against his chest: Finding his nipple, still wet with saliva, he pinched at it with cruelty. And then he dropped to the skin at his waist, so much more tender, and pinched  _ that _ , too. No softness in these movements, not anymore. He would deal with emasculation in the usual way.    
  
His fingers were still tight around the base of his cock, pushing deeper and deeper into the hole that Cobra had barely managed to prepare for him. He heard whimpers, and recognized the source. Withdrawing by an inch, then, fighting against every maddening desire to bury himself to the hilt in this hot and writhing creature and fuck him properly, he nosed his cock's head slowly in. Another flutter of noises from the body in his arms, sounding beautiful against his own small and helpless grunting. He rocked, just like that, in incomplete thrusts that had his cock's head nudging purposefully against Cobra's prostate. Deeper, then, finally, with a shallower withdrawal; and deeper, and shallower, and deeper, if only to put more space between blinding jolts of pleasure. When the bones of his hips pushed flush against the man's ass, he breathed a sigh of perfect relief, and felt his cock twitch in its perfect nest among Cobra's walls. And then he pulled back,  _ shallow _ , and started towards a pace that was less and less patient and more and more animal.   
  
His hand, useless now between their bodies, circled to collect the southerner's girth again. Mouth dropping to test at his shoulder with his teeth, nipping, biting, his wrist flicked to whisk fingers over barbells in tight, rapid strokes. "Tell me," he breathed, husky, "tell me how I feel in you. Tell me how I fill your needy cunt."

 

COBRA -

 

The brunet cried out, chest arching and then shoulders tilting to one side in response to the pinches, hands flying to claw at the backs of the abusing hands with a grimace. Even with the pain, his body shivered at the feelings that the man's cock was putting him through, tongue pushing out past his lips to taste the  air despite himself. Like a whore, he squirmed on the prick that impaled him, clawing hands turning needy and insistent as he guided them to other parts of his body; to his his chest, to his stomach, to his cock. A moan pushed out of him as Sigvard's teeth grazed over the little galaxy of bruises and hickeys he's already raised on his neck, finding a kind of pleasure in the pain that sent his eyes rolling back into his head.   
  
"G-good," he stammered breathlessly, eyes opening just enough to see, rather than feel, the way that his studded cock was dripping precum like a leaky fountain, spreading over the brute's fingers as he stroked him. With a deep gasp, he tried again, more articulate this time. "It feels so good," he enthused, voice heavy with with sex as his hips bounced in the man's lap. "Sigvard, I want to cum already. You...  _ hrmm _ , my cock won't stop... you're doing this on purpose..." He hadn't known the man would take such offense about the quip about being a woman. Right now, he was more man than Cobra had encountered in a long time. "B-big!" he cried out, finding the words he hope would give the blond the kind of apology he wanted. "Your fat prick was...  _ hn _ , made for me, yes..."

 

SIGVARD -

 

There. Cobra was delivering him everything he'd asked for, his whorish desperation palpable and intoxicating in his staggered breathing and animal moans and quivering, beautiful body. Sigvard grinned into the flesh between his teeth, and he only got crueler still. His embrace pulled him tighter, and his body worked so much  _ harder _ , pounding into him now with a smack of flesh that grew wet with oils and sweat. He grunted, roared, his voice hoarse and breathless. His stroking had stopped at the slave's warning; his grip tightened to pain. Iron on his tongue. Nipping teeth had drawn blood.   
  
The force of his cock driving deep and staying perfectly and completely buried in the southerner's body pushed them forward in their place; but it wasn't the twitching, frantic effort of release. Not yet. Not fucking nearly. Heaving, he let both hands drop to take Cobra's hips and hold him still while he grinded further into him. "Control yourself," he commanded, with just a little tinge of disdain. Nevermind his own noises, coming down from wolfish frenzy. Nevermind the way his body swayed.   
  
Lips pushed against Cobra's ear, then, going back to softness, sweetness, as before. "Will you let me have you the way I like it?" His nose tucked in against the man's jaw, nudging it back, murmuring into his throat. "Hm? Without insulting me, this time?" His fingers dug a little less deeply into flesh and bone, opening up to smooth along the southerner's ribs. "Can you manage that? Or is being bred like a bitch the only way you'll take a man's cock?"

 

COBRA -

 

The pounding became too hard, losing the skill that had pushed Cobra so close to the edge so soon. He let out an angry cry as he felt blood trickle down his collar bone. He did not need to be told to control himself after that; his mounting orgasm faltered, signals scrambled by outrage and fear. With both hands now he reached up behind him, anchoring in the man’s hair with a cruelty of his own. The vivid memory of Sig’s wrongdoing bred disdain for his efforts at tenderness now; he yanked his head forward over the very shoulder he had bled, faces side by side at the cheek.

 

“Yes,” He cooed, voice syrupy with a deadly falseness. “Let me face you, Sigvard, so that I can gouge out your eyes.” The grip did not relent; even now the muscles of his ass, too, tightened and made it difficult for the blond to move. “Shall I draw blood as you have drawn mine?” He carried on. “Do you think you deserve to cum after disobeying me?”

 

SIGVARD -

 

Heaving against new and blinding pain, Sigvard's body was caught terrorized between fight or flight—and if he wasn't so damned  _ familiar _ with this panic, he might have gone for the latter. But no. His instincts were bred on the battlefield, not in the bedroom, nor the courts; backed into a corner like this, submission was suicide.   
  
Briefly, his mind went to Cobra's exposed cock and balls. He'd have the reach, here. He could crush them, or threaten to, before the man could dig at his skull like promised. But he expected that would be suicide, too.   
  
So he rocked forward, using the advantage of his height and Cobra's reliance on his body for balance—the northerner's palms were free to keep him off the cushions, but the ferocious little kitten would have to drop his torturous grip on Sigvard's cock or hair to keep from colliding with the ground. He'd have a better chance of pinning him down, then, until this ridiculous tantrum subsided.

 

COBRA -

 

To be under Sigvard’s weight face-first in the cushions was a sure way to be smothered. Fearing suffocation more than he valued vengeance, Cobra released his grip on the man’s hair and used his arms to prop himself up. With plenty of air, he drew breath and bellowed. “You made me bleed! I told you not to!”

 

Pushing back against the weight above him, the slave grit his teeth as the efforts buried the cock in his ass right up to the hilt. He couldn’t keep up his resistance while getting his knees forward enough to plant his feet on the mattress. Again, he was stuck, like a furious snake in a basket. “I’m going to make you pay,” he promised in a growl. “Release me.”

 

SIGVARD -

 

Barely past dawn, and already he was exhausted. Lifting a hand to smear sweat from his brow, Sigvard grimaced and worked his cock out of Cobra's ass as well as he could without removing the cage that was his body over him. He was beginning to  _ pity _ him now, and he couldn't place why. "I didn't intend to make you bleed," he grumbled. "I'm sorry."   
  
A beat, as he considered the implications of letting the southerner free. All bad, he expected. But likely worse the longer he kept him. So he rocked back on his heels again, kneeling behind the hunched body of his little lord.

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra’s brow took on a deep furrow at the apology. No sooner was he released, he had risen up and twisted, suddenly face to face with the lamenting man who he suspected, now, was terrible at controlling his own urges however much he scolded Cobra for the same. Gripping his shoulders for support, he lifted his hips up enough to be above the man’s turgid cock and tilted his body to present the bite wound to Sigvard’s face.

 

“Kiss it,” he ordered in a haughty tone. “Lap it clean. I don’t remember telling you to take your prick away from me, either. It’s  _ mine _ , now.” He bared his teeth with the words, grip tightening on the muscle underneath his palms.

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

For a long, long moment of quiet, Sigvard's blue eyes rose to watch Cobra's above him. Not hesitation—something else. Something that tugged at the corners of his lips in the faintest smile, in time. And then, through lashes, he looked at the damage he'd done. Bruises, hickeys, bite marks; and among them, the smallest slivers of missing skin, the faintest lines of blood.   
  
His body didn't need to move much to close the gap, but still he stopped short. Soft lips parted, feeling his own breath. Wondering, very very briefly, if this was another trap. Could his blood be poison? Nevermind that it was impossible; Sig was beginning to believe as much as Cobra did that the laws of reality had no bearing on the southerner. So it could have been poison. He kissed it anyway. His tongue rolled soft, collecting blood, leaving nothing behind. "Of course," he murmured. Careful, careful, he shuffled forward on his knees, and allowed his hands to float closer to the man's body. "All of me is yours."

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra's lips pressed together in a hard line, closing his eyes as the man inspected his neck. His body relaxed in Sigvard's hands once apologetic kisses were pressed to the wound, the spit catching the morning air and turning the sting cool and pleasant. "Yes," he murmured in agreement, reaching down to grip the base of Sig's thick cock with his hand. "It is."   
  
He guided the tip of the man's prick back to his well-stretched entrance, humming softly as he slowly sank down on the length once more. Sniffing, he pulled Sig's hands to the meaty part of his hips before resuming his grip on the man's shoulders, leaning back to get a sweeter angle. "Your ass, too?" He asked with a smile, in a better mood now that he was getting his way again.

 

SIGVARD -

 

A noise of perfect gratitude fell soft from Sig's lips, and he closed his eyes to the sensations of fucking again. The weight of Cobra in his lap, the sublime heat and tightness of his ass swallowing him up, the steadying grip at his shoulders. He wanted to curl over him, to capture his mouth with kisses and swallow every noise that came out of him. But it would be better for Cobra like this, and so he stayed, rocking his hips back and forth and back and forth. Listening, feeling for his godling's pleasure, and chasing after it.   
  
"Nn," he nodded, preoccupied. His eyes opened to slivers, then, and watched Cobra's with a wide grin. "My ass, too. My cock—" Wide hands kept Cobra's hips still as he found that little sweet spot again, not wanting to lose it. Short thrusts, then, making his voice go husky. "My mouth. Everything, Cobra."

 

COBRA -

 

Everything, from the ache in his thighs to the satisfying feeling of  _ fullness _ in his ass had Cobra moaning and gasping just as he had before. Once the man's cock started thrusting against his sweet spot again, the pitch of his gasps changed, signalling to the foreigner to stay there. His studded prick, back to full hardness now, bounced against his taut stomach as he rode the blond's cock.    
  
Crying out, the slave's muscles spasmed desperately to get more of that friction against his prostate even as his hips were held fast, squirming as best they could in the other's grip. His whole body felt electrified, alive in a new a different way to simply living, and he outlasted the exquisite massage just a few minutes more before his breath rattled in his throat and hot cum spurted from his cock. Feeling his seed land on his chest, dripping down to his belly, the slave's eyes closed and his plump lips parted in a silent scream as the ability to see left him as his orgasm took over. Sound returned to his throat and cries turned pitiful as the fucking played havoc on his nerves, pushing another weak spurt of seed from the tip of his prick as his body tried to keep up.    
  
Losing his grip, the southerner fell back into the pile of cushions, his body seeming unnaturally long thanks to the tight curve of his back. He made a noise which sounded close to the man's name but it was unintelligible and only ended with a grunt and more squirming as he attempted to regain footing where he half lay, half kneeled. 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Breathy laughter fell over Cobra's naked body—though, mercifully, Sigvard came after him to join him in the cushions. His thick arms looped gently 'round the man's limp and writhing body, holding him still, holding him  _ close _ as he tried again to find the pace he'd been working at before the poor thing's collapse. Nosing into fabric, then into the heat of Cobra's neck. Humming into his skin, and murmuring sweet praise in the language of his homeland. And finally, a startling breath, jagged moans, jagged thrusts, his body seeming to want to ride out the friction until it was  _ agony _ .   
  
Limp. Just like the southerner had been, but for the fact that Sig's mass suddenly laid perfectly simple and uncontorted against Cobra's. Coming down from pleasure, he quietly dipped a hand to pull his member cleanly out from the man below him, and dropped his head to Cobra's chest in equal parts relief and mourning that the act was over. Minding his own weight, he shuffled to the side of him. The Northlander's heavy head was at his shoulder, blond hair catching against sweaty tanned skin. Quiet, as he caught his breath.   
  
"I don't enjoy being made a fool of," he muttered. Still sore, plainly, from the earlier emasculation. Maybe protecting himself against the same sort of derision, laying like this. "Even by gods. I just wanted a bit of fun."

 

COBRA -

 

Stomach rising and falling as his ragged breathing settled, Cobra opened his eyes blearily as Sigvard spoke. It dawned on him slowly what the blond was talking about, and he turned to face the man with an incredulous stare. “That cut you so badly?” He remarked. Cleary he thought the man’s determination to stroke him off with his chest was bizarre. There didn't seem to be nearly enough meat on the man's bones that wasn't firm muscle for the act to be pleasurable. Cobra himself was thicker than he used to be thanks to Hamad’s dinner table, but not as plump as it could have been, if he didn't regularly continue his training in the privacy of his own room.   
  
"I just don't see how it could be enjoyable," he grimaced, gesturing vaguely in the air. "Fucking thighs, certainly, but some things really must just be done with a woman, and I've never had any interest in their bodies."

 

“Besides,” the slave narrowed his eyes as he rolled over and looked above the Northlander on all fours. “I do not enjoy being spanked like a child. You’ve already made even.”

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard’s face soured sharply at Cobra’s utter tactlessness, the man evidently taking his remark as an invitation to ridicule him  _ further _ . That, plus the sudden absence of the warm shoulder he’d been keen to rest his head upon, left a sort of darkness in the core of him that he didn’t much see the point in talking through. The worst sort of god, indeed.   
  
Lips never losing their firm line, the Northlander rolled onto his stomach in the space left behind by the slave, and closed his eyes as if to nap. He’d announce to Hamad later that morning that he’d need to meditate on the papers; perhaps that afternoon, he’d trade some copper for a warm embrace.

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra, quite accustomed to tactlessness, sat upon the curve of the bigger man's rump. "Why are you sulking now?" he asked, barely trying, and failing anyway, to keep the mirth out of his voice. "Do you fear that I'll be the only person you'll ever lay again? I am not so jealous as other men may be." Grinning, he reached down and felt the muscles of the man's back underneath his hands.    
  
"Not to mention that I haven't taught you another lesson," he smirked, pressing his lips to the shell of the man's ear. He recalled, then, how his powdered Prialilly was missing. It was a shame; to force the man's spent cock into hardness now would have made for some exquisite torture. With a grumble at the back of his throat, he collected the vials that had been in his overall. There was no sign of it. All of the others would have been returned to his room after the servants cleaned up their mess last night.    
  
"That is a shame," he sighed. "Another time. I am bathing; do you wish to join me before you meet with Hamad, or will you be sulking for the rest of your stay?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

A huff of air punched out of Sigvard’s nostrils at the slave’s final insult, but he did not stir. His eyes only half-opened, staring at nothing. “Lessons, lessons. You must know you have so much to learn, hm? If you are going to lead.” His thick arms drew up to lay around his head, and his body settled further into the cushions, finding no comfort. “You must learn when to be generous and kind to your people, or you will lose their interest. This petty spite and selfishness and humiliation you play at are not attractive things in a leader, much less a lover—and my cock will be no good to you soft.”   
  
Lids fell closed again, and his voice dropped to the carelessness of half-sleep. “I am not a hard man to please, little thing; if you struggle with  _ me, _ your campaign will flounder. Have your bath. I intend to fuck someone who is as interested in my pleasure as I am in theirs.”

 

COBRA -

 

A hollow laugh huffed from Cobra's throat. Shifting his weight to sit properly rather than straddle, the sole of his left foot was suddenly thrust in Sigvard's face. At just a few inches away, the man would see in great detail the carved scar tissue spelling "CIRQUE" across the ball of his foot, obnoxiously large as if it never expected to be replaced. It was struck out by a single line with much thinner scar tissue. Across the arch of his foot, where it had been less tender to walk on but certainly no less painful to endure, was the brand of Hamad's coat of arms; a serpent coiled around a scale. It was customary to brand the foot; it stopped slaves from leaving easily in the early days of their capture.    
  
"You forget who you are talking to," he reminded the man. "If I am a vile creature, then it is men who made me. And for all your talk, you are just as petty and selfish and humiliating as me, so tell that to your whore when you pay them to fuck your tits." His foot planted on the small of the man's back as he stood to leave.


	4. Subjugation

COBRA -

 

The powdered Prialilly was back on his desk in his room. Cobra regarded it with a great amount of distrust, leaving it out in the open instead of filing it away in the locked cabinet where he kept most of his toys. His mood had soured with Sigvard's hypocritical lecture, his arse still stinging from the discipline, but it was turned positively foul when a nervous-looking servant arrived with a bundle of clothes from Hamad.   
  
Green. Gold.

There had once been a number of green and gold clothes in the harem wardrobe but Cobra had since burned them all, and Hamad knew that. He was being punished for something; no doubt Sigvard had refused to sign the papers. Each footstep of his down the marble hallway felt like thunder, and he wore and expression to match, along with the green and gold overall. Unlike the leisure clothes he'd worn earlier, this one was more like a costume; cut much closer to the body, with shorter legs, and a front in two split pieces that left the centre of his torso exposed. It could mean only one thing; Hamad expected a performance.    
  
"Cobra," Hamad greeted him warmly. The men were already seated; Cobra had been late on purpose. Trying his best to mask his fuming behind an indifferent expression, he made a point of sitting by the Duke rather than at the ambassador's feet. He was fed a grape before Hamad carried on. "Ambassador Mads, did you hail from a part of the Northlands that was visited by the old traveling circuses? Perhaps we can show you something that would remind you of home and aid your meditations."

 

SIGVARD -

 

If there had ever been a part of Sigvard that wished to be rich and powerful, his stay at Hamad’s estate would have ground it to a fine dust.   
  
There was entirely too much sitting and talking, for starters. It seemed customary to sit and talk before a meal, and then during, and then afterward; and all this time, sitting and talking, he was fidgeting like an infant. The heat, yes. And this awkward fucking garment that was too tight around his collar. Too tight everywhere. Wanting to shift his weight, he felt he  _ couldn’t _ , else his thick body might tear this finery to pieces.   
  
As if the physical strain wasn’t enough, there was a kind of bizarre and terrible social  _ dance _ to it all. For all this talking, nobody seemed to be saying what they fucking meant. When he’d told the Duke that the latest revisions to the contract demanded some time to be thought over, the southern prick had managed to contort his face into  _ delight _ at the news, as if hosting Sigvard for an indeterminate number of evenings brought him so much more joy than the promise of a trade route that would double his city’s trade across the continent.   
  
He should have expected it; he should have known that the deserts would prove opposite to the Northlands in every uncomfortable way. In his country, if you filled yourself to bursting at a longhouse feast, you were entitled— _ expected _ —to free yourself of your leathers or your furs or whatever else constricted your body, lest your gases get trapped and painful rather than flow freely from you in the natural way. And if Björn down the table had been offended by something you’d said, he’d  _ tell _ you as much, just as Sigvard had done to Cobra that dawn, although likely with considerably more volume and violence.   
  
At the very least, he supposed, he wouldn’t have to keep up shaving.

Scratching at the blond stubble sprouting from his chin, Sigvard’s blue eyes watched Cobra’s body slink along. Once, he flicked his gaze up to his face, catching the slave sulking in his usual fashion; and it was absolutely everything he could do not to heave a sigh. The position at Hamad’s feet grated him somewhat, he would admit.   
  
All this silent torture, these damned social dances, made him delay in brightening to a smile that put creases in his eyes and a chuckle in his throat, utterly and completely dishonest. “Yes!” In present company, he was back to his toddler way of speaking. Annoyingly idiotic, he hoped; particularly the way he softly clapped his hands at the Duke’s cloying offer. “I did, I did, you have it right.” A sudden blush could have been attributed to excitement, he thought, and that was easy enough. But it was quickly becoming difficult to talk, to think, over the pounding in his chest. “As a very little boy, I did, yes. Oh, wonderful.”   
  
Although it didn’t enter his mind that this might be punishment, from master to slave—he expected Hamad simply wanted to entertain him, as he said—he knew, by now, that the promised performance was a blight on Cobra’s spirit. That scar on his foot, and the memory of being bound to breaking, and the way he’d turned ghostly when Sig had confessed his knowledge of him. Nevermind his boyhood memories, nevermind the smell of feet and hay. That was his god, now, sitting there; a meager Duke had no right to subject him to his terrors. He couldn’t allow it. He wouldn’t.

But he was strangled. To protest as violently as he wanted to would be to expose himself. If not as an impostor, as a foreign fool who had perhaps come to love the slave overnight and now threatened Hamad’s domain over his most prized possession. He couldn’t let it happen, and he couldn’t protest. Damn these fucking social dances. There must have been a third option; there was always a third option, he just had to be quick enough to  _ think _ of it.   
  
“You know—?” Panic could be misunderstood as confusion, maybe. “What was that wonderful act? What is your word—oh, it was my favourite as a boy, I loved it. Can he do…?” His hands moved in front of himself, mock-juggling. “Throwing balls? What do you call it? That would delight me.”

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra lowered his eyelashes, keeping his disdain to himself. Sigvard thought too lowly of the Navanese to keep up with his terrible charade of stupidity. The contrast between how he spoke now and the words they had exchanged just that morning was grating on his nerves. He wanted to slap the man about the face, but of course that would have to wait until they were in private together - if Hamad would even allow that. Something gave Cobra the feeling that the foreigner was about to be punished, too. Dangle something pretty and then take it away until the papers were signed. Hamad had used these tactics before, and Cobra was the ornament.   
  
"Juggling? Oh, no," Hamad inclined his head with a smile, graciously steam-rolling past Sigvard's misdirection as he motioned Cobra to stand. "His act is a great deal more spectacular than jester's tricks. Cobra, please."   
  
The slave stood, stretching and warming up his limbs as he watched servants clear away the centre of the dining table and slide a heavy dressing pedesatal into place upon it. He took his time circling the room, getting enough distance between the table and himself before turning a lazy cartwheel to close some of the distance. Twisting into half a back handspring, he landed hands-first upon the pedestal and lowered himself onto his forearms, not unlike a cat. His legs split so wide they almost took a curve to them; one pointed toe upon the pedestal in front of him and the other stretched far back behind him. Cobra hadn't grown rusty over the years; on the contrary, he practiced every day. These were skills that had helped keep him alive.

"Have you ever seen anything like this?" Hamad asked brightly, seemingly more keen to watch Sig's expression than his own performer. "They call it contortion."   
  
Shuffling to face the blond, Cobra brought his legs together in the air and then up, up, up and suddenly over, feet planting on either side of his hands. Eyes lined with kohl, his face stared moodily at the man from within the bizarre canopy made by his own body. Shielded as he was from the view of others, he allowed his lips to part briefly in a snarl.

 

SIGVARD -

 

Feeling the Duke's gaze hot on his skin, Sigvard didn't let his eyes drop from the performance. Even as he sank in his seat, body leaning unconsciously away from scrutiny; even as his skin went pallid in a cold sweat. The wrongness of it. Of him, here, so far away from the mountains. Hamad's and Cobra's faces were too much like in his dream the night before. He wanted to leave this place. The urge of it seized him, muscle and bone, and compelled him to  _ run _ , for fuck's sake, but his feet were like lead on the ground.   
  
He nodded, faintly, then shook his head. "No," he breathed. "No, I haven't." The way those limbs bowed to gravity, graceful and floating like heavy, lazy snowfall. The unnatural, beautiful curve of his spine. Everything exactly the same as it was in boyhood, as it was when he watched from the dark until his forehead ground into the dirt and he had to bite at his fist to keep himself quiet underneath the stands. Fond memories, once. Now, seeing his nightmare in Cobra's face, only horrifying in a way he couldn't quite mask.   
  
"Thank you." Looking to Hamad—the slave was too much like the sun—he drew up a smile. "That was marvelous. I will—I will write to the prince of your sensitivity to our culture, hm?" Run. Just run, for fuck's sake, you stupid oaf. Lips parted, strained with words, until his shoulders dropped and he leaned in the direction of his host. He spoke hushed, as if Cobra wouldn't hear every word. "To be truthful, Duke, if I had known he was he was capable..." A pained smile. "Last night. I feel I've missed an opportunity. If you'll forgive me, I might...? Borrow him again?"

  
  


COBRA -

 

Hamad quirked his eyebrows at the foreigner's expression. "Oh? He was in quite a famous circus. Do not worry; he is not in any pain from doing this. Cobra, does it hurt? You may speak."   
  
Cobra, balancing on his palms now, stared straight ahead. With his back arched so spectacularly, his hips were above his head, knees bent and toes pointed to make a number 3 out of himself. With his throat stretched taut, he sounded somewhat different, voice hushed even when he spoke up. "No, not any more."    
  
He wondered what Sigvard had thought of his act, all those years ago. When he had been young, he still had not smiled because it was not part of his stage persona, but he might have given a sly smirk from time to time; the hint of a seductive grin. Now, there was only serious concentration, and Sigvard did not seem to enjoy the show as much as Cobra imagined he had as a boy.   
  
"I'm afraid that won't be possible tonight; I have matters I need Cobra to attend to," Hamad replied pleasantly, clasping his hands in his lap. "Although, you are welcome to join us, if you'd like? Perhaps we could have a conversation that would help soothe your mind about the trade agreement."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Of course, posed the question, the first thing Sigvard wanted to do was to look to Cobra—to see into his eyes, and to get some understanding of whether Hamad was ignorantly falling into his own trap, or whether agreeing to meet with him would put an early end to Cobra's campaign in the style of a double execution. He wanted to look, of course; and of course, he couldn't.   
  
The Northlander nodded. "Yes." Already, he was working out in his mind how he'd hide a blade in all this loose cotton. "That may be of some help." He should speak to his men, in the meantime, and have them ready for a fight—if they'd even  _ follow _ him in the event this all went wrong and he found himself clawing his way out of the city. "A conversation."

 

COBRA -

 

"Good. Let's depart now, together. Come."   
  
Hamad's quarters, true to his position, were even larger than the dining hall. With wall-to-wall sandstone pillars and white linen drapes and a mosaic windowed ceiling that opened up to the twilight night sky, it was true to the Navanese custom of reserving the finest pleasures for private. Cobra had tread on those marble floor many times before, but never had he felt such a sense of dread in the grand, open space. Hamad, on the other hand, seemed perfectly at home.    
  
"You may take those off, now, Cobra," he said calmly, nodded at the green and gold costume. However, he did not head to the bed which loomed like a throne at the far wall. Instead, he took a seat at the head of a small dining table where tea for three was already laid out.    
  
Letting his clothes drop to the floor, Cobra squinted at the setting. "He knows,' he murmured.    
  
"Yes," Hamad replied brightly. "Although I must say that I am disappointed that you did not come to me after you yourself figured out one of the poorest attempts at impersonating an ambassador of the North that I have ever seen. You will be pleased to hear," he turned, addressing the blond. "That I have already sent word that Mads Larsson never arrived in Navan. Now, please take a seat, have some tea, and tell me why you have come."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard couldn't be sure, from this distance, if the tea was hot enough to scald. It didn't matter. By the time his body could have closed the gap, the Duke could have bellowed enough to alert every armed man on the estate. His eyes slipped over the décor, then, but there was nothing sharp available to him. Nothing blunt, either. Only softness, only silks.   
  
This was no use. He'd allowed himself to become complacent.  _ Arrogant. _ Thinking he'd fooled Hamad, he'd gotten fat and lazy off the man's hospitality. He didn't know his weakness. He hadn't sufficiently surveyed the long stone corridors. His only hope of getting out alive, he thought, was Cobra; and that  _ impotent _ fucking thing was just standing there, making useless observations.   
  
"I'm not interested in tea," he muttered. He'd fallen for stuffed figs, but wouldn't fall for this. "If your aim is to kill me, you needn't bother with tricks or conversations. Give me the blade, as a man would."

 

COBRA -

 

"Yes," Hamad nodded, watching the change in Sigvard's expression and confirming his suspicions as if he could read minds. "You did underestimate me. Many people do."    
  
"What is it  _ now? _ " Cobra complained, flopping down on the cushions next to one of the tea settings. LIke Sig, he left his untouched, even after Hamad took a sip from his own cup. "Some new game of yours?"   
  
"Cobra, please," the dark-skinned man chided, teeth gleaming between his dusky lips. "We have a guest."   
  
Cobra, for his part, hoisted his branded foot up on the table with a challenging squint, leaning back without a word. If Hamad disagreed with his behaviour so strongly, he could punish him, or cancel the slavery arrangement entirely, but he doubted the man would do either right now.   
  
"He is referring to my true motivations," Hamad clarified for the foreigner, steepling his fingertips. Out of the three men, he definitely had the most composure. "Many think it is money or power, but it is simply  _ winning _ . I admit I have an advantage, being high born, but we must not forget that I had several older brothers who were passed over in favour of giving me the title."   
  
"Who could forget," Cobra grumbled, sniffing at his tea suspiciously. Hamad raised a palm but carried on.    
  
"So, as you might be able to understand, I would never waste the opportunity of another  _ nadameer _ among my resources. Like Cobra, you have no true identity. Perhaps above the mountains, but not here." He explained the Navanese term, doubting Sigvard would know. "So again, I ask you: why have you come? Do you have any plan at all, or are you simply running away?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander remained rigid where he stood, fingers and arms and shoulders limbering themselves as best they could in imperceptible motions. The casual familiarity between master and slave unnerved him; that Cobra made no attempt to direct him made him certain he’d been abandoned. And for what? That early morning lecture? A new resentment burned in his chest, for all the good it would do him now. Petty fucking thing.   
  
A dry and humourless laugh growled up from him at Hamad’s supposition. “Running,” he nodded. “Because I served lord after lord after lord until serving lords didn’t suit me. If you think I’ll serve a beast like you, I’m happy to disappoint.”

 

COBRA -

 

Hamad raised his eyebrows briefly, then chuckled as if Sigvard had told a funny joke. "Please," he raised a hand. "Sit. I do not mean to take you on as a slave. Only the king would be flamboyant enough to take on a Northlander as a slave and beside that, most free men would never endure the brand. Most slaves come from the Urdai, like Cobra. Their people have been slaves for millennia."   
  
Cobra's expression darkened and his other foot joined its scarred twin on the table. Crossing his legs and stretching them out, he seemed quite accustomed to being nude in casual settings. "To keep the Urdai is a curse," he piped up, grumbling.    
  
"That is why I keep a slack leash on my half-caste," Hamad replied cordially, draining his tea in a heartbeat. "What is his real name?"   
  
"Cunt," Cobra sniped.   
  
Hamad sighed. "I see Cobra has decided he has no friends in the room tonight. Did you refuse him something? We southerners are quite exacting; we are our most generous when our own needs are being served. What about you? What do you want?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

The offer of a seat would get Hamad nothing but silent refusal. There was no advantage in sitting; only handicap. It would slow him down and complicate his movements if he was ever compelled to run from this place. When.  _ When _ he was compelled.   
  
"I have refused him nothing," he responded coolly, his eyes never leaving the Duke's. He certainly didn't need to know that he had given the slave his  _ life _ , permitted him to poison him whenever he saw fit, and agreed to help him escape for the capital and deliver him to godhood. "Perhaps I don't understand this word, 'generous.' He seemed to be pleased with how I was serving his needs this morning, and still he could not resist the temptation to humiliate me." Generous, indeed. "He is still upset, I think, that I admonished him for it." And all he'd said was only proving to be more and more true as the day wore on. Where was his leader now? Curled up at the feet of his enemy. Allowing Hamad to peck the flesh from Sigvard's bones, bit by bit.    
  
That question. Enough to prick at the corners of Sig's lips in a smile, remembering his own words echoing off of bathwater. ' _ And you say. _ ' A wonder that Cobra had been in the presence of this man for so long and remained ignorant of his most simple strategies.   
  
"I want a home in my country where I can live my life in peace. Free, unperturbed by lawmen." He was not worried, now, that he was humiliating himself; the Duke thought little of him already, and would think littler of him all the same whether he admitted his desire or if he stubbornly refused to. Anyway, he expected to be dead or gone from this place by morning. What did it matter? Perhaps he'd find in Hamad someone more deserving of his loyalty than that petty, helpless thing lounging at the table.

 

COBRA -

 

A rich laugh erupted from Hamad’s throat. “You scolded Cobra? He is Urdai,” the man chuckled as if that explanation alone should be obvious. “Give him the whip or do not bother. They only understand reward and punishment. The Northlander in his blood does not change this.”

Cobra’s lips twisted in a grimace and it seemed he’d had enough of the conversation which excluded him. “He’ll want you to kill someone,” he told Sig curtly. “There’ll be money. That’s always the way. He can’t magically change the law above the mountains.”

“True,” Hamad drawled, reaching out with one finger to tip the small set of silver scales decorating the table,. “But I could change many laws here and gain much more political clout for international affairs, should the king die.”

Cobra stopped dead, feeling a chill as he gawked at the man. He couldn’t tell if he should feel lucky or simply terrified. “You... no, that would be a suicide mission.”

“It’s doable,” Hamad said dismissively. “Especially if he has the help of a poisonous slave who has grown fond of him. Don’t think I haven’t been able to tell. If you don’t want to, then strike the brand from your foot.”

Cobra fell silent, visions of bloody trees weighing heavily on his memory. His mouth formed the words about impossibility but he didn’t waste the breath. He looked to Sigvard, wondering if he’d see reason. “Surely you have no qualms with the Southern king,” he tried.

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Quiet, then, as Sigvard considered the offer. Granted, after a decade as a soldier of fortune, he would be serving a lord again—something he'd  _ thoroughly _ sworn off, he thought, in the same way he'd sworn off fermented shark. But annoyingly enough, Hamad was very quickly becoming a man he  _ liked _ . It didn't take much; Sig had been telling Cobra the perfect truth, earlier, in describing himself as an easy man to please. The Duke had started saying what he meant, for starters. He'd asked what the Northlander  _ wanted _ , and he seemed to share in some small disdain for Cobra's temperament. And his proposal... It must have been genuine, he decided, if only because it was fucking insanity.   
  
Finally, he relaxed where he stood. His muscles stopped readying themselves, and he sucked at his teeth, and at last he headed towards the cushions to join the other two. He'd neglect the tea, still. Wine would have been better. Fabric teared in some unknown place as he sat himself heavily down.   
  
He'd never killed a king before, although he once knew a woman who had. Suicidally stupid, yes, and that's what made it tempting; imagine men and women looking at  _ him _ the way he'd looked at that king-killer. Imagine the stories he could tell. Imagine how close to death he would inevitably come, and the feeling of his body working mindless to fight for life.   
  
"Qualms?" He didn't quite know where to put his legs. He bent them to draw them up, and felt fabric splitting wider. "I had no qualms with Mads Larsson. I can't remember the last man I killed for  _ qualms _ ." What a strangely naive suggestion for such a wicked little beast. "Are you afraid for my life, little thing?" For the first time since that morning, his gaze lifted to meet Cobra's. The northerner's usual impishness was flicking back to life on his lips, in his eyes. "You might come along and protect me, then."

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra flinched and looked away, gritting his teeth as Sigvard, the utter fool, seemed to be entertaining the proposition of becoming a kingslayer.    
  
"He  _ is _ afraid," Hamad mused aloud, rising up out of his seat and moving closer to the slave. Cobra nipped at the dark-skinned hand before it managed to cup his face and tilt it back for inspection. "It's difficult to tell, but I can see it. The real question is  _ why _ ... he has no reason to fear the king; he's bedded him before without even flinching."   
  
Cobra drew his knees up to his chest, reaching up to grab the offending hand's wrist. "I am not afraid of the king," he said defensively. "It is his pet who disturbs me."   
  
Hamad, who seemed to be loosening up himself, gave a wicked grin. "Oh ho ho," he chuckled, pulling Cobra into his lap. Both facing Sigvard, Hamad's chin settled in the crook of Cobra's neck as his hands travelled down his body, flicking the gold that pierced him. "I'm sure you have noticed Cobra's adornments," Hamad smirked knowingly at Sig. "They are  _ nothing _ compared to the king's slave. They say he is a madman, and even I believe it to be true. I am the king's favourite noble, and even I have only glimpsed him a handful of times." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

"Oh?" Utterly tickled, Sig's smile was broad, pushing delight into his eyes; his tone was that which he might take up with children, if he was ever in the habit. For all of Cobra's blustering, he had not managed to instill  _ fear _ in him—at least nothing longer than fleeting terror in the grips of feverweed. Even if this king's slave was ten times the trouble as this kitten here, what trouble was ten times nothing, really?   
  
The Northlander leaned forward in his seat, elbows on the table, wanting to be closer to the pretty thing being displayed for him. Damn 'closer.' He wanted to be wrapped up in him again. Feeling his warm flesh on his lips. Eyes darted down to the gold at his nipples, and the cock hanging between his legs. "Then I will protect  _ you _ ," he offered Cobra, "as I seem to have a skill for taming fearsome slaves." Blue eyes darted to Hamad's. "This one fainted on my cock this morning, you know."

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra's temper burned at the men's lack of understanding. "Neither of you know what it is like to be owned," he sneered, squirming in Hamad's lap but a tanned arm held him fast. He remembered bitterly that Hamad did his own daily training, too; he was not some weak scholar underneath those white robes, although it made sense that he would get Sigvard on his side before he let his guard down.   
  
"Yes, he cums hard," Hamad smirked, tweaking one of the slave's pierced nipples. "But you didn't have him fuck you? I'm surprised."   
  
Snarling, Cobra bit at the air, kicking out. Even though his thighs were spread, his furious expression just dared the blond to come closer so that he could plant his foot in his face. He hesitated only when the tea cup was brought before his lips.    
  
"Drink," Hamad cooed. "It's spiked with powdered Prialilly. I had a servant steal some earlier."    
  
Grunting, Cobra did as he was told. The tea tasted musty thanks to the drug, but he knew the pleasure the ground-up flower could bring.    
  
"You  can tear those off, if you'd like," Hamad nodded to Sig's already ruined clothes. "I have many others."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The moment permission was given, Sig was pulling that damned garb off over his head. Though the promise of 'many others' like this wasn't much comfort. He wondered, briefly, if the Duke might humour him in importing something sturdier from his homeland—only to remember, painfully, that he'd die of heat walking the deserts in fox furs and leathers. A grunt, as he took the bottoms where they'd torn at his ass and ripped himself free.   
  
"I had him fuck me the first night," he recounted, crawling on hands and knees towards the pair. Mindful of any further kicking, he sat on cool marble outside Cobra's spread legs, and lifted his eyes to watch the slave's. "You rather liked that too, I think. And my mouth." Tutting, his face twisted up in mock-hurt. "I've served your needs well, hm?" His hands didn't move from his sides. They wouldn't, not until the man bid them to. "Will you have me serve them again? Or show me a little of that generosity your master speaks of?"

 

COBRA -

 

Hamad chuckled, eyes dragging over Sigvard’s thick form as he crawled closer. “Did you,” he repeated rather than asked. “A good choice.” Watching the pair of them seemed to please the Duke just as much as interacting with them himself, for Cobra felt the heat of the man’s cock press into the small of his back through his pristine robes.

Moaning, Cobra glanced down at himself with bated breath, his studded dick already at full mast thanks to the powdered prialilly working into his veins. A single, shiny pearl of pre formed on the velvety tip and he almost didn’t want to see it disturbed, as though he were detached from his own  experience. Then Hamad reached down to cup his smooth balls and Cobra suddenly wanted very much to be touched again. Spreading his legs wide, he pleaded to the man.

“Again,” He mewled. “Taste me. Make me cum. Sigvard.”

An interested chuckle came from Hamad, causing the slave to grit his teeth and shake his head at the mistake. In this moment he had greater priorities than secrecy. “Please,” he whispered, cock jutting out from his loins.

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander didn't flinch at Cobra's slip; part because anonymity was no special protection to him, part because the way the little godling spoke his name was  _ intoxicating _ , in that immediate and violent way of a strong drink. He only smiled, self-indulgent, and moved his body lazily between the slave's legs. Sitting, still. It would be no fun to give him what he wanted right away.   
  
"Shh-shh," he hushed, with all the gentleness of calming a fitful babe. Soft lips were at the corner of Cobra's eye opposite where Hamad rested his head; kisses trailed to his cheek, his earlobe, parting for the slip of his tongue to take a taste. Blunt fingertips framed his chin. "Of course," he whispered, still loud enough for both men to hear. And then, quieter, nearly voiceless, for only Cobra: "I won't tire of the way you say my name."   
  
The pressure of his fingers dug deeper into the slave's tender throat, as if appraising the quality of him; they dragged down his chest, opening palms to push at his flesh, pinching pierced nipples between the knuckles of his first two fingers. His lips caught the slave's in a kiss, probing him with his tongue, consuming every little noise from him—though when Cobra seemed too distracted by his hands to meet the force of his lips and tongue, Sig would  _ retreat _ , the bastard, until the southerner realized what was happening and pushed into him again.   
  
Broad hands went down, down, but not down  _ enough _ , yet. He was skimming over Cobra's naked ribs, now, only to abandon him and sweep over the cool fabric of the Duke's fine sleeves. He opened his grip to feel the strength of him, down to his elbows, his waist, hungry as he pulled the man's thick body closer. And Cobra's, along with it. Sig's swelling cock bumped at the slave's, and Hamad's fingers at the base. A hum, deep and thankful and greedy. His lips left the slave's, then, to find the Duke's—nipping at him, as his fingers returned to trace the lines of the slave's hips.

 

COBRA -

 

His cries changed pitched, becoming a tiny wail o frustration, as thick thighs tightened around the blond's body but not his head. Not like he wanted. Just as Cobra got the idea that he had two hands of his own, that he could touch himself as he pleased, Hamad caught his wrists and held them back by his shoulders with a knowing chuckle. This intensified the smaller man's protests, pushing up into Sigvard's attentions and whimpering at the vibrations the quiet whisper sent from his ear down his back. His whole body felt warm, the drugs rendering him horny and pliable; perhaps the best tempered he'd ever been under the Northlander’s hands. His breath hiccupped in his his throat in response to Sigvard's squeezing fingers.   
  
"You should be careful, choking an Urdai," Hamad murmured, listening to the pair kiss rather than watching them, for he had briefly slipped back to pull the robes over his head and reveal the the flawless, dark skin underneath. No battle scars, no remnants of attempted assassinations; simply muscles, flesh, and a sizeable cock with a tapered tip. "He'll get visions. I would prefer not to have the next Keht on my hands." He spoke warmly, as if the blond already knew, then leaned into the kiss with a pleased hum. His mouth was still cool from the mint in the tea, and he shared the taste with the man with all the confidence that you'd expected from a Duke.

Cobra, who had used his moments of freedom to get his hands on his thrumming prick, found himself only able to squeeze the base of his shaft, head made foggy and uncertain by the drug. He wanted the feeling to last, yet he wasn't sure if could could bear to stroke himself. Even the sensation of that pearl of precum sliding down his cockhead made him hiss.    
  
Hamad smiled, reaching up to cup the back of Sig's head fondly, staring into his eyes with his own dark gaze. "Sigvard," he purre, trying the name out for himself. His smile was hazy and indulgent. "We could fuck him together, you know," he suggested. "He's taken it before. And the tightness is  _ exquisite _ ."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard bit at the tip of his own tongue, rolling it between his teeth as he considered the Duke's suggestion. He'd felt that tightness, once. As he recalled, he hadn't lasted five minutes. Would Cobra? Gods, he was writhing as though he could make himself cum clenching his ass around nothingness.    
  
Pale fingertips dropped from the angle of the slave's hips to the top of his twitching prick, running ghost-light from base to tip, base to tip, base to tip. He shook his head, faintly. "Maybe when we return from killing your king, hm? Maybe to celebrate." He wouldn't have minded lasting only five minutes, he didn't think. But that morning's fuck had left him feeling as though he was only good for his cock, and now he was becoming restless in inattention. Four foreign hands, and none of them on his body. He was beginning to think this so-called southern generosity was a myth.   
  
His palm had circled upward, and now his troublesome fingers were dragging up the ladder of piercings on Cobra's prick as they had been at the top, base to tip. Reaching the head, he would push the thick cock up against gravity, and let it fall. His head was drawing back from the Duke, now, away from the scratch of that beard that made him burn in envy. Half-lidded eyes drank in the slave's expression like honey-milk, and one of his hands dropped between Cobra's legs, a warm fingertip dragging precum he'd collected from his shaft—not enough, not nearly enough—over his twitching hole.   
  
"Cobra," he droned, his hands carrying on their faint movements. "Look at me. Control yourself—look at me." Whenever the squirming thing got around to it, he'd see the smile on the man's lips. "Touch me."

 

COBRA -

 

The touch was maddening, sending Cobra's body into a panicked spasm that made his full lips twitch and contort in silent words. Prayers, maybe; more likely curses. Begging. Gasping, hands seized the man's thick wrists, trying to get the man's hands away from his aching manhood.    
  
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Hamad smirked, moving around beside the pair and placing a warm hand on Sig's shoulder, squeezing the muscle underneath. "It's the Prialilly. It does strange things to the senses; it can even induce dangerous fits if the dose is strong enough. But I wouldn't waste my little  _ nadameer _ ; he's in no danger of fitting, although he might cum quickly. You can keep going if he does."    
  
Crying out, Cobra's hands shot to the man's ears, pulling him into a desperate kiss. Even that was uncertain; chaste, for a time, lips pressed tight against the blond's until the need to draw breath reminded him of other things he could do with his mouth and he flecked his tongue inside the other's lips. Hands travelled down a broad and muscular back, squeezing two fistfuls of his ass before a third, darker hand closed around the man's cock and tugged in slow, lazy strokes.    
  
Hamad smiled as he pressed the cool glass of an oil vial against the small of Sig's back in lieu of his own shaft. "Would you let me take you instead, then?" he asked impishly. "Could you handle something of this size?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Laughter into that fierce kiss told stories of surprise, of delight; his hands quit their damage to open wide against the slave’s chest, as if his touch could calm his breathing. He adored Cobra like this. So completely unlike his usual temper. Mind you, he was beginning to understand that it was that temper that made moments like this one all the sweeter. Maybe he’d remember that the next time the slave was scowling at him. Maybe he wouldn’t.   
  
“Good,” he hummed into the kiss, as it became something more manageable. “Just like that, little—“ The breath was knocked from him. Relief, pleasure, making his head spin at the even most mundane of touches to his prick. Forehead rocking into Cobra’s, hands dropping down to his waist to grip and pull at him in animal instinct.   
  
A breezy smile, then, and a knowing look to Hamad. “It would delight me to find out,” he nodded, gaze flicking down to appraise the Duke’s girth. “I haven’t yet met a man I couldn’t.” A matter of pride, in fact.   
  
His fingers still squeezed the meaty flesh of Cobra’s hips; he dragged them down, pushing into his supple thighs, tugging them wide again where they’d closed against Sig’s tortures. “Will I break him if I fuck him?” Greedy as ever, he’d swayed to the side to kiss and nip at the flesh of Hamad’s chest. “How does he like to be touched, in this state?” Low, rumbling giggles as he latched onto a nipple, and pinched at the slave’s tender skin. “I don’t think he’d be able to tell me if I asked.”

 

COBRA -

 

True to Sigvard's assumptions, Cobra let out an inarticulate cry, hips flexing underneath his hands as though he really could fuck himself on air. His cock bounced against his stomach, painfully hard and smearing clear precum across his skin.    
  
Hamad's hand left Sig's cock for a moment, the telltale  _ pop _ of a cork being pulled from a vial filling the room before his hand returned to the man's prick with a healthy coating of oil. Both hands were slick now, the other pumping his own thick cock, focusing on the head with obvious intent. "We'll see, then," Hamad purred, although if the man had truly taken Cobra's prick just last night, it seemed reasonable that he'd be able to fuck him without running into any resistance of virginal proportions.   
  
"Gentle is better, on Prialilly," Hamad said silkily, leaning in to bite at the shell of the man's ear. He said this even as he guided the tip of the man's cock to Cobra's twitching hole, egging him on to push inside. "Too hard and the feeling will be lost. Gentle, though, and you can drag out his climax so long that it will never feel complete. That might be difficult, however," he chuckled, bringing two oiled fingers to Sig's ass and working them past the ring of muscle. "Because I intend to fuck you right up to the hilt." Planting a kiss on the blond's ear, he moved behind him, spreading his fingers wide as he pushed in further.

 

SIGVARD -

 

Eyes closed softly against rolling pleasure, Sigvard nodded vaguely. Yes, yes to everything. In blackness, he felt the heat and the wavering tension of Cobra's hole against his cockhead, in desperate  _ need _ of his girth to fill him. He felt the Duke's thick digits working him loose, and did nothing to resist the temptation to close his walls around them  _ tighter _ .   
  
A bracing breath was meant to bring him back to reality. Lids lifted, and there was nothing in his blue eyes now but hunger; they watched Cobra's face, all riddled with pleasure, then down over his heaving chest, dropping to admire his stiff, ornamented prick and the absolute mess it was making of him. Rocking a little forward, he took his lips again in a brief kiss, only to retreat, to nose into the corner of his jaw and close his mouth against his throat and suckle.   
  
But there was no time for that, either. His hand reached for a nearby cushion, tossing it on the marble floor where Cobra's head would land if he would—"Lay back," he cooed, "you trust me with this, hm? Lay back." Straightening his posture, he didn't give the thing much of a choice, using a clumsy grip at his hips and thighs to pull his ass into his lap. Hamad's breath on the backs of his shoulders; he was  _ shivering _ as he dropped his hand between his own legs, taking his cock by the root and nudging into the hole that was starved for him.   
  
A low, keening moan as all that work Cobra had been wasting on thin air now surrounded his length, fire-hot and surging and perfect. He rocked forward, then, body falling around him like a cage, propped up on his elbows, fingers knitting indiscriminate into that cushion and the dark curl of his hair. Spine arched, presenting himself to the Duke, even as his hips rocked to grind himself fully into Cobra. Gentle, gentle. He must try to be gentle.

 

COBRA -

 

Hamad mistook the tightness for resistance, maybe even shyness, and he laughed and leaned forward to nip at the man’s neck as he worked a third finger into that tight heat. “Open up for me,” he urged the man huskily. “Or you’ll never be able to take my prick.”

Cobra crumpled to the floor with a light sheen of sweat on his nude body, head mercifully landing on the pillow as the Prialilly made even that act feel good somehow. Slender fingers reached up to tweak his own nipples cautiously, closing his eyes under the man’s gaze and the sparks of pleasure that came from them. Suddenly, his ass was deliciously  _ full _ again, the act stealing the air from his mouth until he remembered to draw more, writhing back on the pillowed floor with a short, sweet moan. Hands left his body and wrapped around the bigger man’s back instead, trailing down to his hips where he unknowingly held them steady for Hamad to push the head of his cock past the tight ring of muscle.

Gasping, the Duke slapped a broad palm to Sigvard’s buttock and squeezed tight. “Gods, yes. Open up for me,  _ nadameer _ .” He gasped, shoving a few more inches of himself into that pulsing heat. His other hand took hold of Sig’s body too, changing the rhythm of the way he ground into the slave below with the insistent rocking of his own hips.

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard's mouth was at Cobra's ear, wanting to make itself useful—nipping at his earlobe, exploring him with his tongue—and  _ failing _ , very quickly, to manage much more than animal grunts as Hamad pushed into him. The smack, a whimper, and he pinched his eyes closed to concentrate on relaxing, to concentrate on steadying his staggered thrusts, alternating between animal wildness and the gentleness he knew would give his godling the most pleasure.   
  
He stilled his body, then, pushing the bones of his hips flush with Cobra's full ass, allowing the master to fuck the slave by proxy. Gods, that  _ thickness _ . The Duke's firm hands on him, and his gruff voice falling over his shoulders. When he first felt the man bottom out, a hand shot back to seize him by the wrist in a silent bid for him to  _ stay _ there, just for a moment, just so that his reeling body could feel every perfect inch of him. Then, as his arm fell limp, his hips rocked to fuck himself, his stretched hole twitching and constricting in complaint for every moment he wasn't utterly full.   
  
Breaths were coming ragged against the slave's ear, now. "Cobra," he cooed, the same pleading voice as a dying man calling for his gods, for his mother. His nose tucked into his hair, and his heavy hand laid on his chest, thumbing clumsy against the stud in his nipple, rolling it in his grip. "Cobra, Cobra, please." Vague, delirious with pleasure. A hissing breath, and he found the man's lips with his own again, kissing chaste, kissing sweet.

 

COBRA -

 

Hamad groaned, deep voice gaining an animal quality as he gladly kept his full length sunk in Sig's ass. Grabbing the man's thick shoulders and shifting his weight, he planted one foot on the ground, the angle allowing himself to drill the blond fully in short, rhythmic thrusts that arched his back but kept as much of his prick inside the other's greedy ass as possible. His actions earned a helpless cry from the drugged slave beneath him as the added pressure drove Sigvard's cock over his sweet spot with exquisite tease.    
  
Cobra's cock was already leaking freely, making a mess between their stomachs, yet as close as he felt to orgasm, a nagging worry cut through the fog. He knew from experience that his orgasm could be ruined just as easily. Some men loved Prialilly; others abhorred it. Right now, Cobra was unable to think too clearly on the matter, only feel. Begging for more with silent words, nipples so hard they ached under Sig's attentions. "Ss-sig," he managed, eyes barely opened before the sound was stolen by a kiss.    
  
Above them, Hamad pushed out a huff of laughter as he withdrew his length almost fully from Sigvard before ramming it back home. "You've fallen in love with him," he accused in a purr, smiling wickedly as his hands pinched and tugged at the man's thick chest, flicking his nipples with his thumb nails. He did not sound surprised nor appalled; it had happened many times before. "It is not hard to fall in love with an Urdai, I suppose, but you'll suffer for it, and I don't mean by  _ my _ hand."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Madness. What the Duke was saying was madness; but in his total, numbing lust, madness was what suited him. Sigvard broke the kiss to breathe jagged, the sounds of his body's work coming through in gasps and moans and grunts that fell gentle on Cobra's soft cheeks. He chased after them with his lips; but it was futile, messy, until he surrendered fully and buried his face in the crook of the man's neck.   
  
Arms looped under the slave's arching spine, tugging him further up his lap, rutting frantic, losing himself to the tightness around his cock and the drag of his own walls against Hamad's thick meat. He hadn't meant it—tremors coming over his body. He wasn't supposed to be giving in to pleasure, not yet; but it was too late, even as he cursed himself, for he was swept violently over the edge and plunging deep into a blinding, choking bliss. "Come," he groaned urgently into Cobra's neck, "come for me," his throat, "Cobra," the shape of his ear. "Come for me," hissed lower, as his balls tightened and twitched and began to empty deep in the little thing.

 

COBRA -

 

In the end it was the hot spurt of cum spreading deep inside him that made Cobra's eyes roll back into his head, body arching with a series of hitching breaths that choked out moans, riding some tantric and confusing pleasure that only Prialilly could bring. Hands grabbed blindly for the huge man over him, responding with touch rather than the words he could not form, pulling at his hair as if that could somehow bring him closer.    
  
Hamad had other ideas. The moment he felt those soft walls start to spasm around his shaft, he swore and gripped the base of himself tightly, ceasing his thrusting as he rode out the wild pulsing of Sig's orgasm without letting himself cum. He pulled out, still hard, with a scoff. "Being infatuated makes you a quickshot," he accused, waving his hand dismissively before he turned his head to the door, bellowing for a servant. "Bring me Wafir's slave. He can finish me off." Chuckling, he leaned back on one elbow as he slowly stroked his impressive length from base to tip with one hand.    
  
"You should take Cobra to his room," he suggested, lips smirking with mischief. "He just  _ loves _ when outsiders step foot in there. There is a snake on the door; a guard can show you the way."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Lungs worked furious, heaving breaths making it so he couldn't speak—though Cobra, Hamad, would hear the broad smile that touched his lips at the Duke's chiding. In mimicry of affection, he curled his arms tighter around Cobra's limp body, sweeping his embrace up to his shoulders, kissing at his collar and cooing as if to quell the trembling of his body.   
  
And then he lifted himself up, sitting straighter, forcing himself towards sobriety from that dizzying pleasure. Rucking Cobra into his lap, as if he wasn't already buried to the hilt, he had the intention of staying there a little while; it was well worth the inevitable suffering of withdrawal to let the slave enjoy the fullness of his twitching girth.   
  
His body half-twisted, facing the Duke, watching his sparkling eyes, and then his member. "Infatuation? Or your beautiful cock, my lord?" A shame that this was his only chance to enjoy it, hm? Between Cobra's campaign and death at the hands of the royal guard, there seemed to be more and more reasons why he might never return to this place. "You can carry on, if you like." It'd be some minutes before he could stand, much less carry the slave off to his chambers. Speaking of: Hands circled underneath him, now, to knead lazily at his ass. "Or I can suck you." Stubbled chin jutted in the direction of Cobra. "He seemed to think I had some talent for it."

 

COBRA -

 

For his part, Cobra seemed lost in a sexual haze, gasping for breathe as the sweet ache in his balls never quite went away. His hand touched his own stomach and came away slick, causing the slave to grimace even as his studded cock twitched and seeped more seed onto his skin. Yipping quietly as his hips were disturbed to be pulled into Sig's lap, he adjusted quickly, ankles crossing at the small of the blond's back. Brow furrowed and lip bitten, he made an anxious movement towards his own dick but then fingers recoiled as if he couldn't bear the idea of being touched.    
  
Now Hamad really was skeptical, his regal posture almost arrogant as he quirked his eyebrows at the man, hand gently twisting at his cock head. "Your ass could take me, but your throat, too?" he asked pointedly. "Were you a whore before you decided to try your hand at ambassadorship?" Sighing, he stood up looking down at the man with his cock in hand. "You can try," he offered, reaching out with his free hand to run his thumb over the man's bottom lip, "though it may choke you."

 

SIGVARD  -

 

Sigvard's mouth gently opened, just enough to welcome that thumb over the pad of his tongue, absent the violent sting of teeth that Cobra had once thought to give him. He kissed at the tip of it as it abandoned him, and ground his hips into the slave while his prick still held some stiffness. "I expect it will," he murmured, blue eyes watching the Duke's. He found himself developing a fondness for being on his knees in front of foreign cock, it seemed; though there was a stark longing for Cobra's pretty ornaments that made even Hamad's impressive girth almost... ordinary. Almost.   
  
One hand lifted to cage the man's prick; the other dusted fingertips over the slave's ribs, nudging into his stomach, down the angle of his hip, ignorant of the mess he was further making of him. Between his legs, then, between the hot and wet space between them. Turning his palm outward, nudging his thick middle finger into his asshole to join his prick.   
  
"Not a whore," he shook his head, by way of explanation. Though with all this recent flattery, he was beginning to think he'd missed his calling. "Spent myself penniless on them, though." Gaze flicked down to the man's cockhead, amused at the way it looked back at him with all the self-assurance of the man who owned it. Ducking forward, he directed the shaft out of his way, kissing at his hip, kissing at his tan thigh. "In my country, in the winter season," he breathed hot against him, finding his laden balls to suckle at, "there's very little to do but hole up with pretty things like you and fuck the day away."   
  
Beneath them, that thick, sturdy finger rocked further into Cobra. Nudging close to his prostate—gentle, gentle, only the rough shadow of touch. The wet heat of him dizzying, still. Matched by Sigvard's mouth, drawing back, closing around the Duke's cockhead, rolling his wide tongue against his slit, sucking at heat. Caging fingers tightened, then; a poor substitute for his ass, maybe, stroking slow over the whole of his length.

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra’s mouth and blue eyes opened at the same time when the finger entered him, gasping at the stretch and then keening for more of the sweet friction inside him. He took it easily enough; like Hamad had said, he’d taken two men at once before; one of them Hamad, no less. The sensitive afterglow of his orgasm seemed to last an age, as it always did on Prialilly, never feeling quite complete but not unsatisfactory either.

The image of Sigvard rutting for hours on end with miscellaneous Northlander’s made Hamad’s prick throb. He pushed his hips forward with a groan as the blond’s mouth neglected him for a moment, though  the attentions to his heavy balls were a welcome compensation.

“Yes,” he gasped, dark fingers massaging the man’s crown before they took an enthusiastic hold in his hair. He treated the man’s mouth more gently but otherwise not much different from his ass, hips rocking with a sensual sway to his body that had his thick prick tip rubbing deliciously on the man’s willing tongue. “Take more,” He egged the man on huskily, eyes opening to slits. heavy with arousal. “Open up your throat for me,  _ nadameer _ .”

 

SIGVARD -

 

Another finger, this one his ring, now slipped freely into Cobra's grateful hole. Sig curled them, barely; dragged them along his wall, only to rock back again, and over, and over. Meticulous, at first. And then more and more mindless, more and more in the pace of Hamad's thrusting into his mouth.   
  
Hands knitted in his hair, gruff words falling on his shoulders, prompted in him a heady obedience that made him fiercely wish he could be  _ hard _ again to properly enjoy the pleasure of being used for someone else's. A moan, hungry, around the man's thick cock. Half-lidded eyes watched the Duke's hips, and his hand dropped—gripping violently at Cobra's thigh, as if to steady himself—so that his mouth could swallow yet more of his shaft.   
  
The feeling was unlike anything else. That meaty cockhead, closing off his airway as it nosed into his throat, blinded him with starry pleasure, made him roll his hips into Cobra again. Pressure already in his lungs. In his greed, in his stupidity, he'd forgotten to take a full breath. No matter, no matter. His head began to bob along his impossible girth, until Hamad took from him the responsibility of fucking himself and did it properly. Gods, those fists in his hair. Those noises of utter indulgence.   
  
His grip released from the slave's thigh, clumsy in the search for a grip at his waist, holding him still as he snuck his index finger into him, matching the other two, curling, dragging,  _ pulling _ in time to match his master. Thumb drifting, nosing at his tight balls.

 

COBRA -

 

Deep breaths, grit teeth; a needy squirming as fingers teased him so relentlessly. A hissing gasp and a yelp as the grazing of his prostate managed to coax another weak spurt of cum from his spent cock. Pleading moans became laced with protest as the massage continued while Sigvard was so caught up in swallowing Hamad's length. Heels digging into his back, again wracked by the indecision to push himself away or pull himself closer, his balls ached in a way that made his whole body arch. "Sigvard!"   
  
"Sigvard," Hamad echoed, volume hushed now that he was enjoying the heat of the man's throat wrapped around his girth. In time, he did tighten his grip in the blonde hair and began to fuck the man's throat at his own pace, such was his nature. He drew back enough to allow the man a single breath before sliding his full length past those plump lips again with an indulgent groan. "Yes, god... -- send him away, I don't need him any more," he piped up, presumably to the underling's slave who had appeared at the door.    
  
Cobra's balls jumped under the touch of Sig's thumbs, his cries close to wailing now, pleasure greedily sinking its teeth into the territory of pain. His face contorted in a beautiful grimace, fingers curling and squeezing at air. Like a siren's call, it seemed to spur Hamad on, pulling Sig's nose right to the short hairs at the base of his cock, humping in short, rhythmic burst as his balls tightened and painted the man's throat with him cum. He stayed until his orgasm had ebbed away, finally withdrawing and allowing the blond to breathe again. "Exquisite." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Hamad’s load still thick in his throat, Sigvard kissed at the fingertips untangling themselves from his hair. That praise, too—worn like a badge of honour, a broad smile on his lips. Perhaps, if this all went to shit and he numbered among Hamad’s enemies, he could try for servitude rather than outright execution. “Mm,” he nodded. “It was. You won’t doubt me again, hm?”   
  
Eyes fell, finally, to Cobra once more; the pride in his grin switching to a delighted sort of sympathy. Slowly, gingerly, he removed his fingers from his tightness. And then, with a hiss, his flaccid cock. His body arched low, slipping arms underneath Cobra’s squirming form and wrapping tight. “Come up, come up; hold on.” Straightening to his knees, he made the slave a seat out of his forearm, and slowly, slowly stood. ”I’ll take you to your bed.”

 

COBRA -

 

"Perhaps," Hamad replied with a sly smile, never one to forget the underlying business matters at hand. "We'll see how well you complete your task."   
  
As fingers were mercifully withdrawn from him, Cobra took deep, self-soothing breaths, wincing as he reached up to loop his hands around the man's neck. Always as if he was a newborn babe; always as if he  _ needed _ assistance, with this one. It put a dent in his pride to admit that his toes had grown numb during the fuck. He squeezed the man's body with his thighs, burying the shameful expression on his face in the crook of the man's neck. As the effects of the drug diminished, he was finally able to form a single, gruff word to counter Sig's suggestion. "Bath."   
  
"He is, without a doubt, the most  _ unusual _ Urdai I've ever encountered," Hamad remarked as he gave the smaller man a peculiar look before pulling his white robe back over his head. "They'll wander the desert for months with nought but a few sips of water, let alone enough to bathe, yet this one throws a fit the moment he feels any kind of grime crawling on his skin." Sauntering back to the table, he poured himself some more tea and sat back with his arms spread and a satisfied sigh that would be befitting of a victorious warlord at the end of a battle. "You may leave," he waved his hand dismissively. "Take him to the bath or don't; it doesn't really matter."

 

SIGVARD -

 

“Of course,” Sig murmured, turning his nose and lips into the mess of dark hair. He’d fully intended to bathe the thing using water from his basin—but it occurred to him, now, that his soldier’s standard of hygiene was perhaps lower than that of the slave’s. Probably for the best, regardless. He likely would have had some objection to being hoisted by the ankles off his cushions, like an infant to be powdered, to have Sigvard wash his rear.   
  
The trip to the bath did earn them some stares and hushed murmurs from passing guards; egged on, perhaps, by the self-satisfied look on the Northlander’s face.  _ Exquisite _ , Hamad had said. Nobody had called him anything like that before, even in his native tongue. Likely because he’d never fucked anyone with a sufficient vocabulary.   
  
Cool water covered his feet, as he stood on the seat just below the bath’s surface. For once, the chill wasn’t quite welcome; he would have been happy to go to bed filthy, really, as long as it was somewhere warm and tucked close to the slave’s body.   
  
Speaking of: He couldn’t quite negotiate how to get him in the water without a rude splash. “Can you stand, Cobra? Are you able? Let’s get you in, hm?”


	5. Heartsbane

COBRA -

 

Sig's problem was solved for him; once he was near enough to the water, the slave wiggled free from his hold and sent himself splashing down into the cool water, shocking his senses but fully embracing the flurry as he clawed the cum and grime from his stomach. Swimming backwards from the cloudy spot in the water, he stayed under the surface, brooding and squinting up as Sig's water-rippled form like some kind of ankle-grabber from olden day lore. Only when his lungs began to complain did he put his feet under his and stand upright, breaking the surface of the water with a gasp. 

"Prialilly," he spat the word like a curse. Perhaps it was. "I hope you're happy. Once Hamad takes the throne, what do you think will happen to me, hmm? Have you never heard the rumours about kingslaves?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Oh, Gods. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the thought that Cobra’s usual temper made his sweetness sweeter utterly vanished. And was he upset about the Prialilly now, too? After knowingly allowing Hamad to dose him? What a ... complicated creature, this.   
  
With a huff, he squatted on the low shelf and set about washing his cock and ass of cum and oil. “I’m sure I haven’t,” he droned. “Even if I had, I don’t put stock in rumours.” Hamad wasn’t any sort of monster, hm? Cobra had said so himself, otherwise he would have left this place. “Anyway, if you would have me leave the king alone, I’ll leave him alone. If you don’t mind either way, I’ll kill him in Hamad’s name, if only to repay him for that fuck.” Low laughter fell across the water, and, satisfied he was done, he lifted himself out of it and began to hunt for something to dry himself with. “If I do, you don’t need to be party to it; you can be as far away as you like. The important thing, I thought, is that I’ve delivered you a means to get to the capital, hm? You can come along and watch me get slaughtered and kick off your grand campaign.”

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra’s bottom lip trembled, balling his fists as he stared the man down for a moment before he retreated underwater again with a frustrated scream. The talk of kingslaves was a lot more than mere rumour; more like a historically proven death sentence. The Keht that died in that capital during the early years of its construction had only been the start of it all. Some said that this one had only survived so long by being Northern instead of Urdai.

“You fail to consider,” he said softly, rising from the water again, “that I am afraid. I don’t know if it is better to kill the king or leave him alive. If I am meant to go to the capital or simply carry on here like a coward.” Crossing his arms over his stomach, he retreated to the bath’s edge and took a seat, cupping water in his hands and tipping it over his hair.

“Do you really think you can do it? Without being linked to Hamad, no less? If you are found out, he’ll deny all knowledge and sell you down the river, you know. Remember that he enjoys winning by any means.”

 

SIGVARD -

 

"If I am found out, Hamad's loyalty will be the least of my worries, I'm sure," Sigvard dismissed, collecting a thin towel from a stack on a nearby bench. Planting one foot on the seat, he rubbed at himself with furious efficiency.   
  
"You must not be afraid." Said matter-of-fact, without any tenderness; for it was pragmatic advice, not meant to be comforting. "There won't be any carrying on here. If we refuse Hamad, he will find another, and you will either die alongside him or end up a kingslave regardless. This life for you is over. Whether or not you intend to participate in Hamad's plot, you must go to the capital—you must be  _ decisive _ in this, Cobra." His wet mass demanded another towel. Gods, how was anyone meant to dry off with these rags? "If you're unsure, can't you divine it? Your master said something of visions. A kit, was it?"

 

COBRA -

 

"That's easier said that done," Cobra said grimly, the corners of his lips turning down as he carefully got out of the pool and grabbed a towel from the rack. He still lingered a short distance from the man, as if the Prialilly still had his nerves frazzled. Perhaps he simply feared the influence of his touch. The reality Sig painted for him was a terrible one but it was undeniable. Whether it was meeting one or becoming one, a kingslave was in his future and it filled him with dread.   
  
"My time was supposed to be done," he whispered, pulling the white towel around his shoulders and pausing in his efforts to dry his body. "In the mud. In the flames. I wanted it to be over so badly but then my life of luxury felt so hollow it was as if life itself was taunting me." He swallowed and dried his face, stopping any tears from coming. He took a few moment to recollect himself before he spoke again but the waver in his voice was still there.   
  
"It is said "Keht"," he corrected the man. "And I don't want to  _ be _ Keht. I  _ cannot _ be Keht, anyway; the prophet of the Urdai must be recognised by the Urd. They're out in the desert somewhere, perhaps moving towards the coast if it's a time of year when fishing is good. I don't... know what time of year that is. I don’t know everything about their ways."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard was hushed, then, for some time; his hasty drying slowing to a still. The flames he spoke of. It must have been the circus? Sigvard hadn't been there to see it—but he'd heard tales of that roaring fire that stretched to infinity in the sky, and of the aftermath, white smoke billowing from soggy ash, the wailing of women, the unmistakable noise of blades through bone as burned and broken animals were granted the mercy of death. Was that what Cobra was telling him? He'd wished for that mercy, too?   
  
At last, he nodded in silence, dropping the towel to the bench and planting his ass upon it. For all his protests with respect to being Keht, he seemed unnaturally interested in where the Urdai were in their desert travels. Perhaps it was his heart's desire to be among his savage people; or perhaps destiny was tugging him along with little regard for his wants.   
  
The Northlander held his chin in his thumb and forefinger, scraping against the grain of his stubble. "We'll go to the capital," he determined. "Under the pretense of Hamad's plot, yes, but we'll take our time—he'll tolerate some stalling. We'll enjoy the city for some time, first, for its own sake. We'll explore it, and you can feel out whether or not it's natural for you to be there. And if yes, well, then we'll decide what to do about the king. If not, we can move on somewhere else. We'll hire a falconer to track the Urdai, hm? Or find a little hamlet where we can be fat and happy for a time."   
  
His eyes lifted to his godling, and his hand outstretched in want to twine his fingers with Cobra's. "Does that put you at ease a little, hm? You've no reason to be afraid. There are many roads ahead of you, and you can take your time in choosing. And if you intend to deliver me what you promised, and if you learn to be kind to me when you ought to be, I'll be alongside you for the whole of it."

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra sniffed, listening. After a time, he clambered into the man's lap, looping his arms around him, much like the child the bastard was always making him out to be. He hated him. Yes, hate; that was what he told himself as he pressed his cheek against the firm curve of his shoulder. Just breathing for a few moments, before he closed his eyes. "We will go to the capital," he murmured, a furrow in his brow. "I've already seen it. Not us, there, but I've seen a tree. It's the king's symbol, like Hamad's serpent-scales, like the brand on my foot. But this is larger... carved into flesh." His voice gained a haunted quality as he dug his nails lightly into the meat between Sig's shoulder blades.    
  
"I don't know if I still have it in me to endure the pain," he admitted, starting at the turquoise tile inlaid on the sandstone wall. "Perhaps that's why I'm so determined to hurt you instead. Even now I think of ways to poison you. It's weak, but I can't stop." A titter of a laugh escaped him, more sad than merry. "Perhaps I can get my fill when we purge the North of your enemies, hm?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Laughter, even as feeble as it was, brought a warmth to Sigvard's body. "That's the spirit," he murmured through a grin. His heavy arms had looped around the slave, instinctive, when he'd climbed onto him; now he opened a palm to stroke wide and steady along his shoulder blades, his ribs.   
  
Rocking back to lean against stone, he was grateful for the weight of Cobra's body. "I don't mind your poisons. I understand it, now, I think." Remembering the feverweed: The pain, the humiliation, the frustration and helplessness. A glimpse into the reality that the slave would have suffered for years. Only a glimpse. "Just make it up to me afterwards, when you do, hm?"   
  
What he'd said, though, of a tree carved into flesh. Of  _ seeing _ it. A hundred questions running through his mind, and all but one of them struck him as pointless now. His voice was a whisper. "Whose flesh?" Palms had stopped their stroking, and he didn't remember when; he resumed it, now. "Do you know?"

 

COBRA -

 

“You say that,” Cobra gave a weak smile that wasn’t seen. “Perhaps you will think differently after a dose of shankroot, or sleeper toad’s venom.” There’d be a time when he could draw humour from the subject but it certainly wasn’t now. His full lips pressed into a tight line even after the soothing touches, for the talk of skin made him uneasy.

“Pale,” he confessed, curling closer to the man’s bulk. “But not pale enough to be yours.” It was rare of Cobra to acknowledge it, even as indirectly as he just had; the Northlander blood in his veins. It was what made his skin paler than his peers, made his eyes blue instead of pale green or honey brown. Made him different; a bitter reminder of his origins. Pale.

“Would you like to come to my room?” He offered quietly. “Sleep with me. I don’t feel like being alone with my own thoughts.”

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

A hundred questions, and then a hundred more. Sigvard mulled over his own tongue, looking into some unknowable space beyond the stone wall opposite. Pointless. He was simply unnerved, and would be unnerved all the same for whatever answers he could get. Anyway, Cobra didn't seem much interested in dwelling on the subject.   
  
"Mm," he nodded, finally, careful in straightening, careful in hauling Cobra up his body and rising to his feet. "The snake on the door, yes?"

 

COBRA -

 

"Yes," Cobra murmured. It had been mere coincidence; the door had not been made for him, rather that Hamad's slave had always resided in the room that bore his seal on the door. Since moving in several years ago, Cobra had turned it into something of a harlot's apothecary; coloured drapes and beaded curtains hung at various angles from most angles from all walls, blocking out most of the light from the balcony and keeping it cool and dimly lit inside. Various fineries caught the light of candle lanterns; coin belts, gold headdresses, bangles. A similar pile of tasselled cushions as with most beds, green being the only colour absent, and rows upon rows of locked cabinets with vials and beakers just visible through their stained glass doors.    
  
Wiggling free of Sigvard's hold, much more carefully than the last time, Cobra paced over to an overflowing closet and pulled another coverall from the shelves, coloured persimmon. "Tie it for me," he asked, clearly sulking as he held up the halter straps by either side of his neck. With his flexibility, he could have done it easily, but he wanted the man close to him again.    
  
"Did you bring anyone with you, when you came?" he asked. "We'll need camels and a caravan to make the journey to the capital. Even if we follow the coast, it is not a safe journey for just two. Robbers circle Navan like vultures." 

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard's fingers, lacking finesse, tied Cobra's garment in a knot designed for  _ sturdiness _ , not for comfort, although it would do. Open palms swept to the front of his shoulders, then, to keep him there, and he dipped his head low to kiss at the junction of his neck.   
  
"Mm," he hummed, nodding. Dropping his hands around Cobra's waist, under his arms, linking them together against his belly. Rather than pull the man back into him, he moved forward to push his mass against him. "Two of your kind. Four Northlanders. I don't think I could pay my countrymen enough to tolerate another ride through the desert, and anyway I promised them they would be free once the papers were signed. If Hamad has any favoured men, I'd gladly take them."   
  
Lids falling closed, he pushed his face into the nape of the slave's neck, head heavy with all this thinking. "We may need fresh camels, too, hm? I don't know how hardy those beasts are. The caravan we've got, at least." Brow furrowed against skin; Cobra would feel it. "How long do you think we might stay here before Hamad gets impatient? I'd like some days, I think."

 

COBRA -

 

The slave closed his eyes, pleased with the closeness no matter how poor the knot was. he leaned back into the man's touches but his explanation made his blue eyes open.   
  
"You convinced Urdai to leave the tribe?" he asked, eyebrows raised. He hadn't heard of such a thing, but then again, Cobra did not know absolutely  _ everything _ about his kin, so it was possible that Urd had allowed it for whatever reason. Or they had simply cut ties with their own people. What was it that Urd had said? That they walked like ghosts without a true Keht. He should have paid more attention.   
  
"I'm sure Hamad will give you money," Cobra spoke for the sake of speaking, absently putting his hands over Sig's. "He has lots of it. As for how long we could stay... a few days before he would start to get impatient, yes... it's a long journey, after all, and who knows how long the task itself would take. It will be an irritation to be without a slave for that long." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

The sudden interest in Cobra's voice puzzled him; he didn't know whether or not the men were Urdai, he'd only meant that they were  _ brown _ , like the pretty thing in his embrace, for it was all the same to him. But was it really so unbelievable that someone might abandon a miserable life of wandering the desert for a flash of coin, for the promise of a better life among proper civilization? He didn't think he'd met someone so loyal as to turn up their nose at that kind of trade.   
  
Fingers arched into the slave's covering palm, twining between his knuckles. "Good," he sighed, exhausted. It had been a long, long day from the start. "A few days, then." To set out at daybreak would spell doom—he needed time to  _ rest _ , to train up his body for the trip and any misguided robbers in the night. And for, perhaps, a few more stuffed figs.   
  
Releasing Cobra's fingers, he slid his heavy arms out from around him and padded towards the bedding. Down into it, body sinking like gratitude, pulling a cushion to his chest and curling his body against the chill of the dark room. He wondered: Had the southerners invented proper  _ blankets _ , yet, or was that still some centuries off?   
  
Half-lidded eyes roamed across the décor of the space, having ignored it until now in favour of the décor of Cobra's body. "You want to take any of these things with you? In case we don't return?"

 

COBRA -

 

Running his fingers through his hair as he couldn't be bothered searching for a comb in the mess of his room, Cobra shrugged as he followed the bigger man to the bed. "Most of these things were already here when I arrived. It is mainly just the poisons that were added." It was also just the poisons that were tidy; the servants were too afraid to step into Cobra's chambers to organise it for him and the only thing he cared to look after himself was his collection of insidious substances. Laundered clothes were left in stacks by the door and found items were left on his desk; nothing more.    
  
"I'll take the most useful poisons but it's easy to get more in the capital. They say the black market is just as large and thriving as the city above it," Cobra shrugged, pulling up Sig's arm so that he could settle into the crook of his body. Blankets were hard to come by in Navan; most nights were too warm to need them. "If I don't return I'll be dead, or worse," he joked, but the humour was weak. "I won't need poisons when my body is ash."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard's tongue clicked, and he pinched at the skin of Cobra's stomach fiercely between thumb and forefinger. "Stop that nonsense." He'd had quite enough of this sulking; like cruelty, too much of it was unattractive and deeply unnerving in a man who'd once called himself  _ god _ and promised to lead him to destiny. "You must be strong, now, much stronger than this." His body rejected the slave's; clutching the cushion closer to his chest, he made the effort of turning his body onto its other side, and drew his knees up tighter.   
  
"If you don't return, you'll be enjoying godhood. Suffering otherworldly delights, and guiding your people." He seemed to be more convinced of it than Cobra. "You won't have any reason to come back to this miserable place."

 

COBRA -

 

With a grunt of surprise, Cobra's feet kicked out as his stomach was pinched and he bared his teeth as he was denied an embrace. Looking down at the massive egg made by the man's body, he sat back and used both feet to shove him off the bed entirely, sending him rolling onto the tiles. "Do not scold me for cruelty then deny me softness in the next moment," he hissed, seething. "I don't need more things in my life to guess about. I need an  _ ally _ ."    
  
Grumbling, he scooted closer to the edge of the bed, contempt brewing as he looked down at the man. It was quick to be dampened by memories of tender pleading. "Come to me," he ordered. "Kiss my feet, or kiss  _ me _ , but you will not spurn me, Sigvard."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander's eyes were hard on Cobra's, his lips a firm line as he mulled over what was said. A grunt, then, and an uneasy shifting of his weight. Not quite guilt, not quite, but something close to it. On hands and knees, he crawled to the bedside to kneel; an outstretched hand upturned, offering a place for the slave's ankle.   
  
He sat, cross-legged, and cradled the slave's foot in as delicate a touch as he could manage. He bent, and pushed his lips to his toes. "Forgive me. I was wrong to have said that, in that way."   
  
Drawing back, he watched his thumbs push slow circles into muscle and tendon and bone. "I am your ally. I have given you everything that is mine to give, I have promised you everything. My life is in your hands, Cobra, tied up in your purpose. When you are flippant with your life, it frightens me, because it is my life, too. Do you understand?" Gaze lifted, pleading, jaw clenching and unclenching in some uncertain energy. "I'm—I can prop you up, from time to time, but I need to see some strength in you. Some belief—" His lips, straining for words, rendering his mass feeble. "Some belief that you will triumph. Something I can follow, and... and know that I have not thrown my life away, because it is entirely in your hands. I have given you everything. I am your ally, I am."

 

COBRA -

 

He watched, as coldly as he could, as the man kissed his foot, but his lips curved in a faint smile despite himself. A faint furrow in his brow. A yielding, perhaps, to the inevitable, just as Urd had once told him it would be. "So it's strength you want," he sighed, letting his lead loll to one side as he leaned back on his hands. "Then we must visit the Urdai. You're right, Sigvard; I am nothing without followers, and they say there is a legion of them waiting out there in the sands. However terrible a way of life it might be, it will gain me recognition."    
  
Not to mention an audience with the king. The light in his eyes changed with the thought. There was a statue of Keht in the capital, made not out of respect but some perversion. Any king with delusions of a grand legacy would be most eager to meet him.    
  
"I'll need to strike the brand," he murmured, flexing his foot to display the scars. "I can convince Hamad that it would be wise to do so in case we are caught, I'm sure. It's been a while since I've had to walk with a limp," he chuckled.

 

SIGVARD -

 

Relief and exhaustion made Sigvard's smile weak, his head heavy as he nodded his gratitude. Strength, yes, at least a little; some conviction, something to convince him that Cobra intended to make good on what Sig had asked of him. That they would live through this ridiculous campaign, and thrive on the other end of it in their respective freedoms.   
  
"As I said," he murmured lightly, "I can prop you up from time to time, hm? In the literal meaning, too." Shuffling closer to the bedside, he laid his arms across the slave's lap, and his cheek upon them. "I can carry you until you've healed. Do all your dressings, if you can't reach." Forgetting all about Cobra's  _ reach _ , evidently. Thoughts were slowing with tiredness. His body still ached for blankets. A great stack of linens and furs, more for the feeling of the womb than warmth itself. Something to hold him tight. Gods, he wanted to be home. He closed his eyes, and sighed, and put images of it into his mind. "Thank you."

 

COBRA -

 

"There is no part of my body I can't reach," he reminded the man, voice growing sleepy. It occurred to him to strike the brand that night, maximise the healing time, explain to Hamad later, but his body was weary from their Prialilly-laced escapades and he didn't feel like the sharp bite of a knife pulling him from the arms of sleep. "In the morning, then," he sighed, absently petting the man's blond hair like a cat. His brow furrowed at the thanks, confused, but he fell unconscious before he could address it. It had been a long day.   
  
In the morning, he rolled over, wriggling away from the man with a mindful glance over his shoulder. Opening one of his stained glass cabinets, he ran the back of his fingernail along the rack of vials thoughtfully, glancing over his shoulder again before he plucked up his choice and padded back to straddle the man's big chest.   
  
"Heartsbane," he explained, dabbing a drop of the clear liquid onto one finger which he hovered over the man's lips. "The ultimate wake-up tonic." The drug was named so for the intense chill it brought to the veins; as if their heart was plunged in a bucket of ice water if the dose was high enough. It could cause heart attacks and death of seemingly natural causes in older men, but Sigvard's ox heart would fare just fine, especially with only a single drop.

 

SIGVARD -

 

Thoughtlessly, Sigvard opened his mouth to accept the substance, swirling his tongue around Cobra's finger so as not to miss a bit of it—when it came to the slave's effort in teaching him to exercise some paranoia, the starting point was painfully clear. He settled his head into the cushions, then, and watched the man's face. Hands, lazy with morning, pushed calloused fingers into the soles of his feet. On the left, he traced his scarring; Hamad's, first, and then C, I, R...   
  
After a long quiet, then, his eyes went wide. A deep breath in was punched out just as quickly, so he could take it through his mouth instead: Hoping to whip up more of that cold into his lungs. Whatever delicateness was in his hands was lost, as his open palms slapped wide and painful on Cobra's thighs. Not meant to hurt him, not at all.   
  
"I  _ like _ this one," he heaved, a childish sort of delight behind his voice, matching the spark in his eye. Chest pumping, he wriggled his fingers and squirmed in his place to hasten his circulation. Oh, it was wonderful. Like a bracing gust at his back, a stinging chill coming over  some northern lake and kissing his cheek to promise him good fortune that day. Eyes flashed greedy to the vial. "May I have some more?”

  
  


COBRA -

 

Cobra watched him lazily, settling his weight on the man's stomach and planting his hands on his chest. As fingers traced the brands, a quivering built up in his limbs, culminating in fingernails digging into the thick swell of Sigvard's pecs as Cobra drew in a breath. It might as well have been just as icy as a Heartsbane-laced kiss, for it brought with it memories of snow, iron manacles and long, sharp needles. The drug kicking in was a welcome relief, for his teeth were pressed together so tightly that it ached even after he let his jaw relax.    
  
He had to chuckle at the man's enthusiasm. "It is not unpleasant in small doses. Navanese soldiers rub it on their gums to keep alert in the night's watch, and the Urdai use it to counter the burn of the spices they chew and the desert heat."    
  
He frowned, however, at the request for more. "You may not," he said curtly, snatching up the vial out of the man's reach. "Too much can make your heart seize up. If you imagine it thrice as intense and right in the centre..." He assisted the image he was painting by giving the man a sudden jab in the chest right over his heart. His fist made a soft but distinguished  _ thump _ against the muscle and ribs. "Older men have died from it." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sig made to pout, to explain that he was not like these  _ older men _ and could stand a little intensity—but delight at the sensation took him over again, and he quickly forgot everything but gratitude. His hands moved to snatch up the fist on his chest, to draw it to his lips and kiss at balled fingertips. “Well,” he announced, booming, “I’m fully awake.” All the muscles in his torso went taut, and he curled himself up to sit without the help of his arms; they were preoccupied in gripping at the delightful flesh of Cobra’s hips all covered in fabric, digging him down, down, to nestle in the crook of the Northlander’s lap.   
  
“This morning we’ll see the Duke about striking your brand, yes?” He was more or less confident that the events of the night previous hadn’t come to him in a dream, but he’d been burned by that assumption before. “Will any of your concoctions help with the pain of it?” Brow furrowed, recalling what the man had said about being unable to bear the sort of scarring in his visions. How much  _ strength _ was in him, really?”   
  
“Also,” he carried on, scarcely leaving room between thoughts, “I’d very much like something to wear that fits properly, something not made of onion skins, hm?” He was pinching at persimmon fabric between thumb and forefinger. “Or whatever this useless finery is. Oh—” Perhaps the dose was quite enough, after all. “Would this Heartsbane counteract Feverweed? And you said—is there a difference between the Navanese and the Urdai?”

 

COBRA -

 

Suddenly face to face with the man, Cobra capped the vial and put his hands on his shoulders, sniffing at the man's lips. Scentless. Useful. Heartsbane was hard to detect. Considering he was not foolish enough to keep truly deadly poisons in his store, it was perhaps the most dangerous substance he possessed. Cobra preferred to deal in suffering and excitement rather than clumsy murder, after all. The truly nasty poisons left corpses foaming at the mouth, mottled and all shades of purple, red and blue. Easy to trace. Fire was a cleaner way to do it.   
  
Burning trees with white limbs. He couldn't quite see it clearly, but he could hear the flames crackling and he knew what it was. He shook his head slightly, regaining his thoughts and leaning in to give Sigvard a gentle kiss, enjoying the cool sensation on his lips. "No," he murmured. "But I'll manage. It only has to be deep enough to scar the skin, not cut the tendons. I've had a lot worse."    
  
Thankfully, the blond's talk of clothes distracted him from the grim experience that loomed in his near future. Visions of the man in a coverall, the bib ludicrously insufficient to cover his broad chest, made the Urdai chortle. "Not a coverall, I think," he smirked, patting the man's shoulders as he rose. "But we can find you something. The loose pants the guards wear, although it will make you look common. Men of status wear robes here."

Padding back to the pile of clothes spewing out of the wardrobe, he had to wade quite deep into the shelves to reach the garments he never wore because they did not fit him. He emerged with a pair of black silk pants, excessively roomy with the legs cuffed in embroidered gold fabric. The waistband shaped a sharp V; slave's pants, clearly, so not even a soldier's garb. He wasn't going to do much better in the harem wardrobe.    
  
"It would do a poor job of it," h shrugged, tossing the garment to the man. "Feverweed lingers in the body much longer than Heartsbane. If you had not jumped into the bath, you would have suffered all night. Heartsbane gets used up much faster." The second question, however, perplexed him. "What do you mean? Both of us have always been here, but the Navanese have always been  _ here _ ," he gestured vaguely at their surroundings, meaning the coastal area. "They don't walk like us. They also had much better dealings with the King when he came to these lands." This time, the gesture really was at the lavish surroundings.

 

SIGVARD -

 

"I  _ am _ common," Sigvard muttered, altogether at odds with the idea of being viewed as a  _ man of status _ , even accidentally. Catching the flimsy pants chucked in his direction, he held them up against himself, and it immediately confounded him that something so fine would be associated with low breeding. Of course, he was putting them on immediately; hooking his thumbs into the waist and pulling it up until the fabric was tight against his legs, such that the 'V' rode up to his nipples. Not only were they delightfully functional—and this, he tested by squatting, lunging, and sitting down and getting up again—they were  _ pretty _ , and he was quickly enjoying the novelty of being decorated as such.   
  
Barely catching Cobra's meaningful gestures, he nonetheless nodded at the lesson. He thought he had it straight, now: Brown in the desert was Urdai, brown in Navan was Navanese. This would come in handy, he expected; although in matters of diplomacy (or... speaking to anyone at all), it would probably be wiser to let the slave have the first crack.   
  
He was wandering to the southerner's side, then, tugging the hem of his pants up as he went—they did have the annoying habit of slipping down and going a bit loose in the leg—eyeing the heap of fabrics. There was something strange about it, but he couldn't quite work out what. No matter. "You know," he hummed, chewing at his tongue, "something Hamad said, it's been on my mind." His gaze fell to Cobra. The curl of his hair, the corner of his jaw, and the structure of his shoulder where it peeked out from his coverall. A wicked smile split his lips wide, and his fingers lifted to play at orange cloth. "Is it true you're fond of me?"

 

COBRA -

 

The expression on Cobra's face when the man pulled the loose pants up and beyond his hip bones was no doubt priceless. It was such an unimaginable idea to the Urdai that he simply gawked for a long moment before he had to consciously close his mouth, swiftly closing the distance between them before, Urd forbid, the man leave the room dressed like that.    
  
"It is worn like  _ this _ ," he said pointedly, yanking the the V-shaped band down to wear it belonged. The repositioning made the floaty fabric hang in a loose bell shape, and a lewd patch of hair was exposed at the man's groin. "I'll find a sash to keep it from slipping, the last thing you need is a coin bel--" In the motions of turning to venture back into the wardrobe, he was stopped by the man's hands on his clothing. The words that came out of his mouth sent a defensive jolt through him.

"I..." he hesitated, teeth clenching together as his plump lips twitched in an involuntary grimace. "I don't want to  _ kill _ you, if that's what you mean." Feeling hot in the face, he pulled the man's hands from him and slipped back into the narrow canyon of fabric where hopefully he could not follow. He took his time in uncovering a long, thin strip of cloth in a bright vermillion to contrast the black material of the pants. "Here," he held it out with both hands, refusing to meet the Northlander's eye. "Tie it around your hips and stop looking like such a fool.

 

SIGVARD -

 

"Oh?" Sigvard murmured softly, investigating the slave's face. Really, that look of utter repulsion was impeccable. He might have been  _ convinced _ , too, but for the fact that he knew the man had no reason nor inclination to hold his tongue in the way he seemed to be doing. He knew a girl like this, once. A bullheaded little smith in a town among the mountains. He didn't see the sense in it; life was far, far too short for such pretending. If a person wanted to deny themselves these delights, fine, fine, let them. But why pretend not to want, when one wants? "I see," he droned, feeling entitled to play along. "He was mistaken."   
  
His broad hands took the slip of fabric from underneath, careful not to touch Cobra's fevered skin. He began to tie it, at first, like a rope; but finding that that cut into his flesh and did a shit job of holding up the pants (which seemed to be even  _ more _ functional in the new style), he opened the cloth in a wide band and looped it round and round the handsome structure of his hips, tucking it tightly in at last.   
  
"That is disappointing," he breathed, an open palm slapping where his hard stomach met the belt, as if to test it. He was satisfied. "For I was growing very fond of you. Now I'll have to suffer heartache for some time." Callous fingers lifted, illustrating the center of his broad chest. "You have a concoction to soothe that, hm?"

 

COBRA -

 

To his own credit, though its value felt small right now, Cobra didn’t flinch at the accusation against Hamad. Setting his jaw, he watched the man slowly figure out how to dress himself. The ensemble was perhaps a little dark for his Northlander complexion but the cut of the garments was pleasing on his thick frame. He could instruct one of the servants to dig out more suitable garments for the big man later.

“You say ‘was’,” he said softly, reaching out to place a tanned palm over the place on Sig’s chest that he claimed was so affected by heartache. “Have you learned to hate me, yet? Have you learned that be it slave or prophet, I can never be  _ anyone’s _ completely, not even my own?” Smiling faintly, though it was not a pleased smile, he slipped away to the cabinets.

“I do have something,” he murmured. “Nimbleshark venom. It makes the fish it hunts too sluggish to get away, but in humans it just feels like one is floating. We give it to soldiers after battle, sometimes. I don’t like to use it because it makes me see things.” He pulled a small bottle of yellowish liquid from the shelves. “Would you like some?”

 

SIGVARD -

 

Quiet, patient, Sig hadn't stopped watching Cobra's face—tracking where his eyes went, and seeing all the little muscles that went into that false smile. And when he moved, of course, he followed. The slave would come to learn in time that he would always, always follow.   
  
After a moment's pause, he lifted a hand to wrap around the man's, closing his dark fist around the vial. "No," he shook his head, voice low and firm in spite of the amusement on his lips. "Later, perhaps. For now, it's enough that you trust me, I think."   
  
Shifting his weight forward, it was nothing to push his lips against Cobra's forehead. Down, then, to kiss at the corner of his eye. "If your intention is to make me hate you, little beast, you're going to have to try a different strategy." He released the slave's hand, and brought both of his own to his tan cheeks instead; drawing thumbs over the softness of his skin. "Are you ready to be cut? I'll feed you grapes, hm, when it's over?"

 

COBRA-

 

Cobra let his eyes close as the man kissed his face. Trust; yes. He'd lost track of when he'd come to trust Sigvard, too. I twas the reason he allowed him to be so close even now. Breathing in, he leaned against the touch for  a moment, giving a small hum of acknowledgement as he was reminded of the unpleasant task for that morning.   
  
"Cut, yes..." he grumbled, opening his blue eyes again. "It had slipped my mind." Pocketing the bottle of nimbleshark venom, he sighed and pushed his fingers through his hair, although the rich curls looked much the same as they always did, brushed or otherwise.    
  
"Come on then." Making his way out into the halls, they passed some guards who nodded their heads and greeted the foreigner as Sergeant, not Ambassador. Cobra narrowed his eyes, waiting until they were out of earshot. "It would seem Hamad is as tireless as ever in smoothing things over," he said snidely to the blond. "No doubt some lie that you are military and not the ambassador as once claimed. Does your country have a structure such as this? I did not see any military in my time North unless they were incognito members of the audience." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sig shrugged, grunting vaguely. "It's a rare thing. The middle regions—on the flat tundra, the lords there seem to have taken a liking to it. All that rank and file between them and combat. It makes them smooth." An open hand swept over his chest and stomach, as if to brush away scars and muscle and indicate flawless, plump skin. Like Hamad's. Though the Duke seemed to do  _ some _ training, at least—by appearances, and by the strength of his grip on his hips as he fucked him. Maybe Sigvard could spar with him, later.   
  
"Few of them enjoy success, though," he went on. "It's unnatural for our people to exist in that state." Hence the sharp wince, earlier, when he'd been addressed by the title.   
  
"In most places, we do it as it's always been done—everyone fights." A wide, wide smile flashed his teeth, and there was new liveliness in his steps; he was growing sentimental. "Some are better fighters than others, but their only privilege is being at the tip of the spear. Their lord would be among them. He would have proven himself a good fighter. And generous, and wise, and other things. A good leader. But he fights, still."   
  
He had that heady nostalgia still about him as he turned to Cobra and grinned wider. "Even our gods fight." His heavy arm lifted, and he swung the full weight of it in a slap to the slave's back that would knock the wind from him.

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra gave a hum in reply. The Navanese people were doubtfully well-informed about Northlander customs so Hamad's lie would probably stick. It was something else that Sig said that nagged at Cobra's mind, however. "Smooth," he murmured thoughtfully, pinching at the plush skin of his hip. He could remember a time when he was nought but sinew and bone, a sylph of a thing with a gaunt face that was made only sharper by the excessive kohl demanded by his costume. He exercised now; real exercise, not torture masked as training, and arguably he was stronger than in the old days simply by way of being properly nourished. Yet there was no doubt that his life of luxury had taken a toll on his endurance and added fat to his body.    
  
"Am I smooth?" he began to ask, when the great wallop of Sig's hand knocked him forward. The blow didn't sting but it hit hard, banging his lungs like a drum through the back of his knees, and his face was already burning with a mix of shame and anger as he stumbled down onto his hands and knees. Fingers tensing flat against the cool marble, he drew a breath in through grit teeth.   
  
"I think," he groused, lifting his head to fix the blond with a furious glare. "I would like  _ you _ to make the cut." He had been planning on doing it himself. He had done it before. He had taken great pleasure in striking CIRQUE from his foot, just as he would now take pleasure in holding the act over Sig's careless head for many moons to come.

 

SIGVARD -

 

One would think, by now, that Sigvard would have learned his own strength; although he'd meant to disrupt Cobra's balance, he maybe hadn't planned to do it quite so ... dramatically. With only a  _ touch _ of guilt, he circled to the front of him and squatted so that they were closer to eye-to-eye. "Happily," he agreed. He might have been useless when it came to southern pants, but knives were another thing entirely.   
  
Offering a palm, entirely unsurprised if the slave chose to reject it, he stood to carry on. "You are smooth, yes," he mused, utterly entertained by his godling's vanity. He didn't mind smooth, much. It was good for fucking. There was a certain thrill that came along with digging fingers deep into soft flesh, or rutting his hips into a pillowy ass, or nearly suffocating suckling at a giant tit. But harder was  _ better _ . The frantic exhaustion of fighting against equal strength; feeling one's muscles give out trying to pin down a body. Or being bested, and held firm in the mud, praying to all the gods as an iron grip closed around one's throat. And combat. Harder was better in combat, too.   
  
"But that's all right. We'll build you up, hm? So you can knock me on my ass, next time."

 

COBRA -

 

The words were tactless - to be expected of Sigvard. Glowering, Cobra looked away, getting to his feet on his own accord just as Sig had predicted. "I am not good at spears," he grumbled, as though he had been put through the paces of combat training before. The time in the desert had certainly been eventful as he made his long and arduous journey South to wind up in Hamad's household. He had not known Hamad's name when he had stepped foot in Navan, and now that very foot was about to have his name struck from the skin.    
  
"Come," he said coldly, making his way back to Hamad's chambers without looking back to see if Sig was following. He always followed, after all. They found Hamad, back at the writing desk with the small, silver scales and a good deal more decently dressed than he had been the night before.   
  
"Ah," Hamad looked up brightly, as if a night of debauchery had been perfectly restful. "Cobra,  _ nadameer _ , have you heard the good news? We have passed a test by the Northlanders. They sent some military in place of their ambassador to see if he would be well-treated. You have already sent back word of your findings," he nodded towards Sig. his self-satisfied smirk said it all; Cobra's mood had been soured too much to coddle the man's tireless scheming.    
  
"We should strike the brand," he said flatly, striding towards the table. Spying a silver letter opener, more like a true dagger than its benign cousin used in less paranoid households, he moved to pick it up. Hamad's hand on his wrist stopped him.

"Oh? And why should we do that?" he remarked with quirked eyebrows. "Does the  _ nadameer _ intend to steal my slave? Sigvard, wasn't it? What's stopping you from making your own brand as soon as mine is done?" Underneath Hamad's grip, Cobra's hand clenched into a fist.

 


	6. A Matter of Marks

SIGVARD -

 

"I have no use for slaves," Sigvard answered flatly. He stood just a little ways into the room, still, where Cobra had left him; his head tilted to the side to inspect the arrangement of their hands, and he decided there was very little he could do by way of brute force. His words would have to do, then. What a shame. "If I did, I would have some with me. It's easy enough to collect a thrall or two in a good summer of raiding."   
  
Feeling as though he'd made his point, he crossed the space with long strides and offered up his palm for the knife. His free hand trailed blunt fingertips down Cobra's spine in something meant to be affectionate. "Anyway, I can't write." Nor read, for that matter. It was lucky these doors had  _ symbols _ .

 

COBRA -

 

At that, Hamad gawked. “You can’t write?! Even  _ Cobra _ can write,” He spouted the words incredulously, again grinding in the notion that Cobra was the least of the three men in the room.

“That is why I want to accompany him,” he spat, yanking his hand free from the surprised man’s grip. “He’s too stupid to get the job done alone. But I can’t be found with a kingslayer with your mark still on my foot when you are next in line for the throne.”

“Yes,” Hamad mused aloud, taking up the dagger and twisting the handle thoughtfully under his chin. “It is fortunate for me that the king is too queer-minded to father children. Keht’s Curse, some might say.” He shot Cobra a knowing smirk that made the smaller man scoff in disgust.

“Stop acting like I know so much about the Urdai and just give me the damn knife,” he snapped.

“I will,” Hamad said slyly, “ _ After _ you have promised you will return to me.” His hands were fast with the knife, making a cut across the palm of the same hand one would use for a hand shake.

“I don’t...” Cobra grimaced, taking a step back. “I don’t want to!”

“Sigvard,” Hamad instructed the man briskly. “Hold him fast. I need to cut his hand.”

 

SIGVARD -

 

_ “I don’t want to!" _   
  
Blond brows knitted deep wrinkles into Sigvard's face, a sharp frown on his lips and eyes wide, wide as that night with the feverweed, looking to Cobra. This wasn't the plan. This wasn't what they'd arranged. They had aimed to trick Hamad, hadn't they, and wasn't this part of it? It was a simple blood pact, gods, and what of it? Why wouldn't he go along?   
  
The order strained his body in every direction. He couldn't work it out. Was there a reason for Cobra's hesitance, or was this one of those moments where he was too damn stubborn and too damn foolish to stow away his pride? His skin prickled with heat and the flush of vigour that always came in combat, and his mind echoed with Cobra's chilly voice from the night before:  _ I need an ally. _ A grunt, and his hand closed tight around the slave's wrist. But he did not offer him up. Tugging him behind himself with a similar force as he'd knocked him to the ground in the halls, he made a wall of his thick body between master and slave.   
  
"What for?" The Northlander's booming voice filled the room. "Is it just a covenant? I'll take it, I'll swear it for him." His empty palm thrust forward, an offering. "I can calm him, I can make him see sense later. You understand this, I know. You trust that I can make him see that his place is at your feet, when you are king. So let me swear it on his behalf. I'll bring him back to you when it's finished, hm?"

 

COBRA -

 

Heart hammering in his chest, Cobra thought for a fleeting moment that the man's grip around might hold him fast just as Hamad had said. He gasped as his body was tugged backwards, cheek hitting the man's broad back. Resisting the urge to cling, he stuck his head out around the man to see Hamad's frowning face.   
  
"This is not a good deal for me," Hamad said bluntly, his usual businesslike grin absent. "You are very likely to die soon; killing a king is no easy feat. If you die, there's no reason for Cobra to return except for grapes and luxury, and he could get that anywhere in the Capital."    
  
"The poisons," Cobra tried.   
  
"Please," Hamad waved a hand dismissively. "You can get those anywhere, too. You arrived here with nothing but the clothes on your back. Don't try to fool me that you're attached to anything or anyone, Cobra."   
  
Cobra's grip tightened on Sigvard's hips, not sure when he'd started holding him. "He's mine," he protested, trying to keep his voice from wavering. "Any pacts he makes, I'll still honour, dead or not."   
  
"Oh?" The Duke challenged, unimpressed. "And where is his mark, hm? Has he cut you, Sigvard? Branded you? You are a  _ nadameer _ too, Cobra. You don't have a seal."   
  
"... I have teeth," Cobra said softly, eyes locked on the blond man's meaty shoulder. "Sigvard." Could he ask him of this now? Would he understand? "...Get on your knees." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

It was just a fucking madhouse, wasn't it? The whole estate. Something about the sea air, or maybe one of Cobra's poisons had made it into the water supply, or maybe all southerners were just  _ bred _ to be manic. Choice words bit at Sigvard's throat when the Duke complained that the likely fatal errand he was sending the Northlander on was somehow a bad deal for  _ Hamad _ , but he was silenced by the exchange of escalating insanity between his two masters.   
  
He understood, yes; he understood quite quickly. But he was less eager to  _ obey _ . Releasing the slave's wrist, he turned to face him with a clenched jaw and hardness in his eyes. He wouldn't mind the mark. He had many marks, after all, and their meaning was whatever he gave them—like that first night with Cobra, inventing stories about his scars. The pain, too, he could bear. What made him hesitate was what he'd  _ seen _ . Bite wounds were nasty little beasts, quick to bring infection and to fester and rot. He'd known good men, hearty men, who'd caught a tooth to the fist and had died in agonizing, shivering fever before the week was out.   
  
"A knife would be preferable," he remarked, grumbling. But he turned forward all the same, and lowered gently to his knees. If it was meant to be this way, there was nothing doing. He shook the apprehension from his voice; in its stead, there was conviction, there was softness, as he spoke over his shoulder. "Do it, then, Cobra. I am yours."

 

COBRA -

 

Hamad scoffed as he watched the man get down onto his kneees, clearly thinking that the only insane one in the room was Sigvard. "What is it about being a  _ nadameer _ that makes a man lose his mind?" he complained, but Cobra ignored him, dropping to a squat as he surveyed the man's shoulder with no small measure of trepidation. He'd seen bite marks too, mainly because he had inflicted them dozens of times in his life. Backed into a corner like a starving dog, or trapped on his back with no other weapon but his hands and teeth. To say that he bit the hand that fed him was an understatement. To do it to Sigvard, though, was an uneasy task.

He shut his eyes and thought of the Circus. Of eyes that were blue but much paler than Sigvard's, of a gaunt face and long, lank hair. That made it much easier, the stab of fear in his belly allowing his teeth to clamp down on the meat of the man's shoulder with enough force to tear the skin. He still open his eyes in surprise, however, at the sudden shift in feeling between firm, intact skin and juicy, bleeding flesh. All the times before, he had been too caught up in fury or fear or some other emotion to register it. Now, though, he backed off from the wound with a wince, Sig's sounds playing double in his ears. His lips looked like he had applied rouge in the same shade as the blood that dribbled from the wound, and he flinched as a handkerchief hit him in the face. Hamad had thrown it.

"Fine," the Duke groused, seeing to his own cut with his tongue as he watched the slave clamp the cotton over the bite wound. "Make your pact. But keep in mind, Cobra, that if you do not return to me, I know where the Urdai walk. I have spies in almost every place. Finding you would not be difficult." There was a dark look in his eyes as he slid the dagger, handle first, to the edge of the desk nearest Sigvard.

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard pinched his eyes closed at the uniquely blunt-sharp pressure of teeth sinking into lean muscle; too late, he wished he’d had a bit of leather or wood to chew on. It was bearable, until it wasn’t. To keep from severing his tongue, he let himself push out the impossible breath he’d been holding, and barked a complaint that fell into heaving whimpers as he was  _ released _ , at last, and his body worked fruitlessly to rid itself of pain.   
  
He was scarcely listening to the Duke; Cobra would have to mind whatever foreboding nonsense he was detailing. The instant the knife was within reach, he had it. Slick across his palm, the blade was almost  _ delightful _ compared to the bite, and he leaned forward to collect Hamad’s handshake in just as swift efficiency. “There,” he huffed. “It’s done.” Untucking a bit of that long, long vermilion belt about his hips, he cut a length to wrap around his hand, and to wipe the blade upon.   
  
With no more thought given to Hamad, he turned to his little godling, snatching up his lips with his own, impatient,  _ needing _ something beyond the iron taste of blood. His hand lifted to fall heavy against the kerchief, relieving Cobra of the same duty. ”Where do you want this done, your brand struck?” His voice was hoarse, designed for the two of them, although Hamad was in earshot. “Here? Hm? Or is there someplace private, someplace you’re fond of?”

  
  


COBRA -

 

Sigvard's blood was coppery. All blood was. Cobra ran his tongue quickly over his teeth, paranoid that he might find a scrap of Sig's flesh clinging to them, but the bite had been clean. Just jarring. It had never been jarring before. By the time he came to his senses, Sig's blood was already mixed with Hamad's. There was no backing out of it now; the Navanese took blood just as seriously as the Urdai took fire.    
  
The kiss shared more of that metallic taste between them. Again, the cutting had slipped his mind. "Just get it over with," he said with a frown, but Hamad cut it off.   
  
"Do it in your own rooms," he said dismissively. "And don't show yourself to the court with a limp. They aren't to know that you ever left my side at all. I'll have food sent to your rooms."   
  
Cobra nodded, begrudgingly, for he knew it was the best plan of action to meet the ends that Hamad desired. If they were caught, he would claim that he left months ago and his court would all testify the same. If they weren't, however, then there would be no question that the Duke's prize slave had ever left his side. "Fine," he conceded, standing up. Sometimes he wondered why he even bothered with the meetings at all. He stayed close to Sigvard as they walked, eyeing the red spot that was slowly blooming on the handkerchief.

"It won't get infected," he promised quietly, hoping it would be the most soothing thing to say. "I have rubbing alcohol in my room. We can give you another drop of heartsbane."

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Rolling his shoulder against the dull ache—realizing, just now, that the bite's pressure would leave a  _ bruise _ along with everything else—Sigvard laughed a breathy laugh. His knife-hand was cautious, coming round to the other side of Cobra's head. Tugging him close, pushing a kiss into the curl of his hair. "You are generous, after all."   
  
  
The sting of alcohol was much more familiar to him, although familiarity did nothing to stop him from mewling like a babe as it worked fire into every crevice of broken flesh. With Cobra alone, he felt safe enough to mewl. Anyway, the heartsbane was a good treat; a flash of home again, a reminder of what this was all for, and something to focus on that wasn't the shrill nagging of his two wounds.   
  
He shuffled his body closer, where they sat next to the low table, and pulled Cobra's thighs up to rest heavy on his own. His wide open palms stroked softly down from his hips, along his legs until fabric gave way to flesh, and then did the journey over again. "Will you squirm, do you think? Should I hold you down?" Eyes flashed to the cabinet. "Is there anything you should take? That one—what is it? That puts you asleep for days. Would that help?"

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra had never had the opportunity to inspect the aftermath of one of his bite wounds before. It looked more brutal than he imagined; perhaps he imagined it to be weaker, years ago, since it never really had much impact on his situation. "Does it hurt terribly?" he asked with a faint crease in his brow. He was forthcoming with the heartsbane. As unpleasant as the injury was, it would eventually scar to a mark that would be easy to match to Cobra, should anyone challenge it. It was rare to find someone with teeth of identical shape, size and angle.    
  
He pressed his lips together in a hard line as the man attempted to soothe him with his touches. "No poisons," he said stubbornly, looking away as he rocked back onto his rump and raised his scarred foot to the man. "I want it to hurt. Just... don't cut so deep. You'll cut tendons." With the CIRQUE brand taking up so much of the ball of his foot, Hamad had branded the arch. It had not been pleasant and the flexibility and balance of his foot had been affected for months. Even now he favoured the other foot. Taking a deep breath, he bit down on a twisted piece of cloth he'd pulled from the wardrobe. 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard could ask, later, why he wanted it to hurt. Or perhaps he wouldn't have to; perhaps, once his own brand healed and he understood the majesty and the terror of it, he'd come to know it on his own. For the time being, he nodded, and drew his legs up to himself to brace Cobra's offered one between them.   
  
Strong hands held him steadier still, cupping him at the back of the ankle so his other thumb could press into him and find where straps of ligament gave way to softer flesh. Not that he would cut that deep; not nearly. If anything, it was just to marvel at the structure and the art of his foot before it was all bundled up with bandages.   
  
He did not warn the slave before bringing the tip of the knife to his skin. He'd move from bottom to top, in order to see what he was doing—already, at the first piercing, there was a line of angry blood that dripped to his stomach and into his lap. His legs clamped tighter. His hand held him firmer. It was important to etch a line that was straight and thick enough; something that wouldn't be mistaken for an accident or haste when it healed. He was careful. He took his time, and he tried not to think of whether or not that was the merciful thing.   
  
All he saw, as he worked, was flesh and blood. It was only when he was finished that he drew back to  inspect the full picture: The scales, and the serpent, both slaughtered with a fiery gash.   
  
No time to waste, then. He was reaching for the table, for a bundle of cloth to pack and wrap it with.

 

COBRA -

 

A tight whine was the only sound that escaped him, and Cobra could feel proud of that, even if he was drawing in and pushing out air through is clenched teeth like a woman in labour. He tried to keep a steady rhythm to it to no avail, his lungs struggling with a panicked staccato as Sigvard dragged out the work for what seemed like an eternity in the interest of quality. As soon as his foot was freed, he spat out the cloth and gripped his ankle with his own hand, twisting it to inspect the cut for himself, warm blood dribbling over his fingers.

His breath hitched as he recalled in vivid, intimate detail the night he had struck CIRQUE from his foot. By the amber glow of flames. Bandaged tightly in a boot to keep out the snow and mud.

“Sigvard,” he muttered, or perhaps it was a wavering call. He nodded with gratitude as cloth was clamped over the blood, gingerly bringing his stained hand to his mouth to lap it clean. “Thank you,” he said quietly in between coppery digits. “It shouldn’t take long to heal. Then... We can go.” An uncomfortable silence hung in the air, seemingly made larger by the lack of detail in their plans. “How... how do you kill a king, anyway...”

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Blue eyes flashed to meet Cobra's, and he nodded quietly at gratitude. Maybe spoken too soon: Receiving the offered foot, he pushed a thumb into the ball of his foot to stretch his skin taut, such that the wound would be straight and narrow as he pushed fabric against it and began to wrap it round and round. He packed a wad of thick cotton into the bandage, too, as he went; filling in the arch of his foot, in hopes that a misstep wouldn't strain the flesh and split it open again.   
  
Brows arched at the question. "You're asking me?" A wry smile, gaze steady on the slave's as his body worked to spin his bandage, each loop a painful reminder of the gash on his shoulder. "I'm much too stupid to get it done, I thought, hm?"   
  
He looked down at his work in order to tuck the bandage into itself, and to lift Cobra's toes to kiss. Returning his leg to him, he used some remaining gauze to wipe the mess of blood from his abdomen, although it had a way of staining his fair skin in a faint smear.   
  
"I've known kingslayers." Singular, technically; but he didn't think the detail mattered. He'd heard stories of others, after all. "As I understand it, it depends entirely on what sort of king he is." It would be a very straightforward thing, for instance, if he had the habit of joining his men on the battlefield—but Sigvard expected this was not the case. "We'll need to spend some time in the capital. Watch him, learn his behaviours and his estate, and so on. To plan too much now would be a waste of time. Mechanically, at any rate—when it comes to the deed of seeing him dead. But we can think some, now, on where to lay the blame afterward."

Tossing the bloody rags aside, he lifted a thumb to gesture at the loose kerchief on his shoulder, soaked through with blood and alcohol. "Would you bind me up?" His usual preference, a red-hot blade pressed hissing against gaping flesh, would render the mark illegible and utterly miss the point. Unfortunate. Binding would be awkward, and likely work loose with training in the coming days. "And tell me what you know of this kingslave, hm?"

  
  


COBRA -

 

Lowering his foot slow, Cobra eased his weight onto the foot to be greeted with a dull sting, but nothing unbearable. The bite mark really was the worse wound in the room, anyway. Limping forward a few steps, he peeled away the last of the handkerchief and was greeted by the pink, red and blue chaos caused by his own teeth. He placed gauze as he knew that one was meant to do, but when it came to the business of bandaging he was uninformed and for once, he took direction from Sigvard gladly.

“Hamad seems to have this king wrapped around his finger, to be named his heir. I believe he may be uninterested in women, like me. I know the kingslave is male, though it was hard to tell...” The brunet’s expression seemed to grow more apprehensive when it came time to talk about him, so he diverted to history instead.

“The king once kept the Urdai’s Keht as a slave. After he died, it became the fashion for the king to take a Northlander as a slave instead. They said  _ that _ Keht shared a ring with a goatherd from the mountains and the king mistook it for marriage, even though we do not do this thing.” The man said the words ‘we do not do this thing’ with such confidence despite his limited time with his own people, reciting what they had taught him. “The king took one for his own, and the rest of his bloodline followed. There a very few Urdai in the capital, now, so perhaps it is good fortune that my eyes are blue.” He finished off the knot on the bandages, stepping back so the man could test the movement they allowed.

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard's thick arm lifted and fell again, his face a mixture of displeasure and utter lack of surprise. It was awkward, as he thought—the back-and-forth motions of a sword's thrust made the fabric ride up, and moving his elbow higher than his shoulder was simply unbearable. He'd train with his non-dominant arm, then. That one seemed to be fine.   
  
A long, long sigh, and he was laying his naked back heavy against cool stone. Closing his eyes to the world around him, and grimacing at Cobra's latest thoughts. "We may need to kill him too, then. Depending on what sort of mad he is. He won't do as a scapegoat if he's coherent enough to deny charges—we must not leave the question open. Denial won't do. It would be better to kill them both, if they are close."   
  
Both arms folded over his face, blocking out even the dim light streaming through the slave's careful arrangement of curtains. "An outside enemy would be best. A foreign one. That will inspire them to accept Hamad: He is their protector, he will crush the enemy and get justice for their slain king. Something more insidious, conspiracy inside the court, that will just make them uneasy in a way he cannot soothe. It should be foreign, it must be foreign."   
  
He thought, briefly, of asking Cobra if he'd be willing to take the blame: Proclaim himself Keht, and pronounce a holy war between the capital and the tribe he was estranged from in the name of vengeance for the maltreatment of his ancestors. The truth of the matter was secondary. But he didn't know the Urdai numbers, and surely they didn't have siege equipment, and it was very likely that the king's army would just snuff them all out.

He clicked his tongue. "If I had fifty northern men, it could be done." He was defaulting to what he knew, next. "A raid across the desert? They would do it just to have their names live in song. And once the lord is dead, it is our custom to take who and what we can and leave regardless. Hamad could make a show of pushing us out." A contemplative hum, as if it wasn't utter insanity. Starting with getting the men to begin with. A child wouldn't follow Sigvard, if they were old enough to know the word for men like him.   
  
"We'll think of it later," he decided. Eyes slid open to find Cobra, and his brow pinched. "You're to be stuck in here until you're healed, hm? What will you do to occupy your time?"

  
  
  


COBRA -

 

"There's no way of knowing the best course of action without visiting the capital to see what we are up against," Cobra agreed, although he appeared uneasy at the talk of killing the kingslave. "I had hoped..." he murmured, gesturing vaguely as he stumbled back to sit upon the bed. "That Hamad might take him on instead, like some kind of trophy. If he really is as decorated as they say, that he might prefer to keep him instead of me. But if we do encounter the Urdai, if I do resign myself to becoming the next Keht..." He trailed off, wondering if history really was to repeat itself so easily. Looking back, it seemed like the pull of Kehtdom had been slowly guiding him towards this fate for years, now. And why? Because he used fire to set himself free? Because he was a half caste? Was it punishment for his sins? It felt like it.   
  
Talking about the immediate future was easier. He swallowed, leaning back against a mound of cushions as he ran a hand over his stomach. "Sleep, heal, prepare for the journey. Train. Eat less. I'm soft, right?" He tilted his head to one side with an empty laugh, wondering why the words were bothering him. "Perhaps I will design myself a brand to better mark you with, hn?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Oh, now Sigvard had heard that sort of laugh before. He knew the source. He was in the habit of saying things without thinking, and had never managed to learn the trick of fucking off before he was made to witness the consequences.   
  
So, with a grunt, he rolled himself up and onto his knees, and leaned forward to put palms against cool stone. Crawling to Cobra, and nevermind the twinge in his shoulder.   
  
" _ Smooth _ ," he corrected. Soft, yes; but critically too, unscarred by combat. Close enough now to reach his foot, he stroked the bandaging at the bottom of it in a feather-light touch. "But I was mistaken, I think. You have these." Up, and up further still, until his hands were planted on either side of Cobra's hips among the cushions and his face was just below eye-level. His gaze dropped down to the brilliant piercings studded in each nipple. "And those." His voice low, with no trace of humour to it. He didn't expect his ornaments were personal choice. And there was the torture, too, that the slave had described; the sorts of horrors that didn't leave any marks. Purposefully so.   
  
The Northlander's heavy body settled into the space left by Cobra's legs, and he dropped himself to his elbows. Dipping his nose into the thin fabric that covered his stomach—after a day's use, and by now only smelling of the man himself—he took breath, and murmured approval.   
  
"You've been scarred enough, I think," he mused. "From this point on, let me take them for you, hm? Like Hamad's covenant, like with the knife. Let me bear these things for you. Everything that comes. I can stand it." Thick fingertips pushed aimlessly into the man's waist, and the  _ softness _ of his hips. "And if you design your mark, I'll cover myself with it."

 

COBRA -

 

The slave gave a resigned hum, the memories distant now but easy to recall. "He wanted more, you know," he murmured, frowning at the ceiling as his hands  traced lines down his rib cage from each nipple. "Soooo many more." Had that been why he had killed him? Had it been the straw that broke the camel's back? Had there even been a straw at all, or simply a frantic opportunity? Dark night. No mood. Mud. Sharp smell. Kerosene. Kerosone. Kerosene. No matches. Cloth. Kerosene. Lantern. Break the glass.    
  
The roar of flames spreading had been the loudest, quietest thing he had ever heard.   
  
Cobra placed his hands gently over Sigvard’s ears, fingers pressing against his scalp. "You can't bear everything for me, Sigvard ," he warned him. "You will become accustomed to the sight of me with a bruised throat, I think. The Urdai seek visions from their Keht relentlessly. It was one of the reasons I left them out there in the desert." Shifting underneath the man, he sighed and spread his thighs, careful to avoid the man's bandaged wound as he cradled the man's head in his lap, smirked as he rubbed the man's nose against the mound of his soft cock.    
  
"What did you think, when you watched me?" he asked curiously, referring to the nights at the circus long ago. He had not been soft, then; less smooth, too. 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard's brow furrowed as he imagined black and purple staining the flesh of his godling's throat, and he shook his head as if that was sufficient to rule out the possibility. They'd find some other way. That shark venom, from the morning—Cobra said it made him see, didn't he? It could be done without violence. Maybe it could be learned. Nevermind that the Urdai had had centuries to try every tactic, and still they'd landed on choking, apparently, as the most effective. Nevermind all that. They'd find another way.   
  
The question was easier. His thick arms slipped under spreading thighs to curl around them and push fingers into supple flesh; grateful for Cobra's care, grateful for the silent instruction to give some affection to his prick. He kissed him at the root of it, heat coming to his face. "You'll think me childish," he began, already defensive, "but remember that I was a child." Lips found fabric again and again; to his hip, and down the inside of his thigh. The clothing was a mild nuisance. His fingers rucked up one leg of his overall, inch by inch, until a breath of satisfaction fell on naked skin. And then he kissed there, too.   
  
But for the answer, he rocked his head back, looked up to lift blue eyes to blue. Lips parted, hesitating. A smile flicking over them that was more nervous than happy. "I thought you were the prettiest creature I'd ever seen."

Now that smile was blooming, as his eyes went to the shape of Cobra's cock again. Fingers curling into that fabric—maddening, now—caught between wanting to see or just imagine the naked body underneath. "The way the light played with you. I can't describe it." Every strap of muscle, every angle of bone, carved out of shadow. Every movement strong and steady and perfectly deliberate. "I was obsessed with the look of your arms. When you stood on your hands, hm?" He used to try it himself, once home again.   
  
His nose pushed into the side of the man's prick, wanting to feel the metal of piercings through thin cloth. Teeth were catching at his garment. Giggling, now, as if he'd snuck wine somewhere in the mess of the morning. He was remembering cool soil on his forehead, the smell of hay and feet, bent over and trying not to howl as he came. "I wanted you to wrap those arms around me and fuck me into the dirt."

  
  


COBRA -

 

"You can't stop it." The whisper came to him as a compulsion, turning his head to one side as he felt strong hands knead his hips. He planted his foot on the mattress out of instinct, swore, and straightened out his leg again, keeping the sole of his foot from touching anything. The feeling of Sig's lips upon his skin made him sigh and his words painted curious pictures in his head. Had he really been pretty? He'd felt too angry, too vicious to be pretty. Perhaps that was what he'd needed to feel like at the time. Creature. That word was more fitting.    
  
_ When you stood upon your hands _ . Spit pooled behind his teeth, eyes open and set with a fey, hungry emotion. Cobra pushed his hips to the man's face as best he could without his footing, his studded cock twitching in interest at the attentions. The surge of ego, arousal at the image of fucking the man into the dirt as he had said. Red sands. His breath picked up, mentally shifting the scene away from the drudgery of his youth and to the deserts where he had been free. Fingers found a strong grip in the man's blond hair, pulling him up into a deep kiss even as his hand swooped in to stroke his plumping cock to hardness. There was a frenzy to it; an urgency hindered by his injuries. Sigvard would be slowed, too. His teeth had done that. He bit him again, just a nip, adding colour to his bottom lip.    
  
"They would have flogged you if you were caught," he croaked, dragging his fingernails down the man's back. "Cumming without paying your coppers. Horny little sneak." A huff of laughter laced his words before he kissed him again. 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Dwelling in that first kiss, plying his tongue past lips and teeth to taste him, to take a little of his heat for his own, some part of Sigvard decided that Cobra's mouth was designed for him. His skin went white-hot in the thinking of it. Fingers down his back, the gentlest imitation of the lashing punishment the slave described, made him squirm and rumble a noise of gratitude and want and something else.   
  
"They would have," he agreed, grinning, voice rough-edged and starving. Too innocent, even now, to fully understand Cobra's meaning. He had no notion of those late-night exhibitions, the ones not meant for boys, but men. "It would have been worth it. I'd get flogged and flogged again just for a glimpse of you."   
  
Thumbs hooked into that vermilion belt around his hips, untucking it and working it loose until it spooled among the cushions. Those loose pants,  _ commoner's _ pants, were off of him in an instant. Nakedness, his natural state. He was swearing into the clashing of their lips and teeth and tongues, his blunt fingers trying to undo the knot he'd made that morning—managing it, finally, and skimming fine cloth over Cobra's shoulders to expose him, too.   
  
Gods, the way the slave's body came up into his broad hands undid him. Cobra's chest, heaving in the violent rise and fall of his lungs, working against the heel of Sigvard's palm as he groped messily at his muscle, rolling his thumb over his piercing without mercy. His full ass, rocking bruises in the shape of the Northlander's fingertips into himself as he fucked his own hand with that ornamented prick. Everything, like his mouth, was perfect. Meant for him.

He was a boy again. Closing his eyes to fantasy, even as his head dipped low to burrow against Cobra's neck and suckle at hot flesh. The sting of the bite kept annoyingly yanking him back from that heady place; he had to stroke himself with his left hand to avoid too much pain, and his own clumsiness and lack of practice in that regard had him keening in frustration. Focusing on blackness, focusing on the body against his. Pawing at the back of the slave's hips.   
  
"Cobra," he pronounced, soft, against the damage on his neck. After three days of this, he had more splotches of red and purple and blue than pristine skin. "Cobra." What Hamad had said, the night before—the ridiculousness of it. This was all just survival, it was all just games and lies and lies. If there was any moment for that to  _ change _ , a frantic fuck because neither of them had anything better to do was not it. But he was a boy again, and he was branded in Cobra's own way, and everything was different. "I'm yours, I'm yours. I was made for you, I know it."

  
  


COBRA -

 

"You don't know what being flogged feels like." He could almost smile with the words. Almost. There was a sadness to it; a memory of flayed flesh so inhuman that it resembled a surreal landscape more than a person. He'd seen people flogged, yes. Hadn't felt it, too precious, too much of a commodity for that, but he had  _ heard _ it. Seen it. The spike of fear in his bloodstream spurred his movements on, sending a thrill through his chest that made him grab flesh with his hands, curl closer to the man's body heat. Cock hard, it lay against his taut belly where he abandoned it until his gripped tightened and he clambered out from under the man with a snarl, saying that he wanted to be on top of the man with a gnash of teeth rather than words.    
  
No malice, though; not right now. Just a fierce determination, a warning display of teeth as if they knew the blond had airy thoughts of owning them. Taking a long moment to regard the man, he sat upon his laps, hips rocking down against his hardness with a slow and calculating tease. The expression in his lips softened but the hard look in his eyes remained, reaching to pinch and tug at one of Sig's nipples until it grew dark and swollen in his hand. He didn't know how to pierce flesh, but he could imagine rings there.

"Sigvard," it finally occurred to him to answer. "If you were made for me, the world will not be kind to you, either." With a hollow laugh, he bend down at a severe angle, back arched like a cat's as his lips and teeth latched over the man's other nipple, the one furthest from the bite wound, quickly making it like its twin. Thighs clamped on the man's broad hips, pelvis rocking as he shifted to suck and bite at the muscle surrounding that sensitive nub. "What do you want," he croaked, more statement than question. "If I fuck you into the mattress, it will hurt. Shall I breed your throat instead?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard made no effort to mask the effect Cobra's little tortures were having on him—his lungs pumped hard in steeling, groaning breaths, and his hand rocketed to knit in his own hair, and all the while his cock was stiffening and coming to an angry red.   
  
The warning fell on naked skin, and he smiled, shook his head, and whimpered with a clenched jaw. Wanting to say something. Unable to. Unable to think, even, with his little master's mouth and teeth on him now. Both hands went to Cobra's hips, his thighs; he was gripping clumsily at him, not to put an end to that white-hot pain but at least to free his own hips so they could buck as wildly into the slave's body as they wanted to. It didn't work. He was just writhing, pinned to the mattress, digging heels into cushions only for them to slip away from underneath.   
  
So he pulled the man into him, instead. Hands digging claw-like into the flesh of Cobra's ass, spreading him, imagining his little cunt and what it would look and feel like to be oiled and ready for Sig's girth. An open palm cracked against fat and muscle, provoking him, even as the thrumming pleasure-pain in his chest made him surrender to breathless moaning. " _ Gods _ , Cobra," through gritted teeth. Trying to pull him closer, now, working against the arch of that spine. Wanting to feel the thickness of his prick between their stomachs. Complaining when he couldn't manage it.   
  
There was never any illusion of a choice. "Fuck me," he answered, gruff. His hands were falling to the mattress, now, trying to push his body up like an offering. "Breed me properly, Cobra." His own cock was fat and heavy, twitching as it strained against nothingness. "I don't mind if it hurts. I want it to hurt."

 

COBRA -

 

Humming. Cobra gave a dark smile as he shifted back some, pushing his bobbing cock down enough to snag Sig's meat in his grasp, too, squeezing the hot shafts together. Sweat. Some precum, but no oil. "You want it to hurt," he repeated huskily, fingers squeezing the head of the man's prick perhaps a shade too tightly. "I don't feel like fucking you dry." It was a nasty, chafing experience, that; bad for the piercings. He would have to pack oil for the desert or they really would have nothing but their hands and mouths. Not that that would be so terrible, but oil was better. Teeth sinking into his bottom lip, he cracked his eyes open just enough to grope around the edges of the mattress.   
  
A vial. No good; the sleep shark venom. He'd said he wanted it to hurt, not make him feel like he was floating. A wide, hazy grin spread over his lips as the idea dawned on him, giving the heads of their cocks a few more sweet rubs before he broke away to fetch the warming oil. The essence of ginger would no doubt work some magic on Sig's insides, and he doused his fingers in it liberally when he returned and shoved the big man's legs up to expose his quim. "I suppose my cock will feel it too," he mused aloud, knowing that the man would realise what he was talking about as soon as he worked two fingers roughly into his hole. "But I don't care much about that." He grinned.

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander's body wouldn't so much as glimpse the pleasure of Cobra's digits tucking into him before the fire was biting vicious at his walls. There was nothing insidious about this, not like the menthol; there was no quiet burn working up to boiling, aching heat. This was a  _ sudden _ , prickling thing, like a thousand stinging nettles working through his guts and flesh from the inside out.   
  
All the muscles in his stomach tensed, pulling breath that wouldn't come—his walls tightening fiercely, trying to reject that unbearable fucking intrusion. And still, his thighs spread wider. His spine arched into the mattress, and he lifted his ass for  _ more _ of it, and when he finally managed to breathe again, each gasp was backed by pleasure, pleasure, pleasure. "Feel it," he echoed, nodding dimly through the haze of ecstasy and anguish wracking him, watching blue eyes with glassy vision. Yes, Cobra should feel it; the oil would burn everything else away and leave them animals.   
  
His hands and mouth wanted to find him, wanted to show him a little violence. Grunting, he rolled his upper body and reached out to snatch him by the hair—falling back against the mattress, he felt flecks of oil spill against his naked hips and chest. Barking a complaint into the inch between their lips, he closed it with a hungry tongue and snapping teeth.  _ Careful _ , now, careful not to make him bleed, but not much more careful than that.

 

COBRA -

 

"Are you happy?" he asked, hushed, question loaded with some dark malice he still wasn't quite able to shake. He observed the man as he spread his fingers, working the ginger oil deeper inside him, coating his walls, rubbing over his prostate. THe way he squirmed, he was sure he'd feel that too. He was almost curious by the time he shifted and lined up the tip of his cock with the man's ass. Wiping his fingers clean on the velvety skin was only a taste of the burn; the real heat came when he snak into him, deep and fast, a move that pushed the air from his lungs. Cobra scarcely had time to take a breath before thick fingers were yanking at his hair, pulling him into a kiss.   
  
A pulse of fear shot through him at the lack of oxygen, the chill surpassing the burn on his prick. He fought for air, snarling, drawing in vicious gulps of it between the play of tongues and teeth. Lips. They felt good under his teeth. He rememberd the taste of the blood; the same coppery mouth-feel as the spices the Urdai chewed to make them forget their hunger. Grunting, he drew his cock back and shoved back into Sigvard's ass with a tortured whine, slowly picking up a rough rhythm that had him gasping more. Fingers around Sig's throat now, pressing; not squeezing, yet. A threat or perhaps just a promise.    
  
"You'll do this to me," he murmured, eyes narrowed. "I know you will."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The godling’s hand at his throat would feel his straining. The effort of drawing breath to fill that broad chest, the futility of choking back every pathetic noise his body wanted to make, and the shaking of his head, trying to summon up the capacity for language.   
  
One rushed and keening breath: “If you will it.” Humming his agony to punctuate it, to come down, to steady himself. As if speaking did the same damage as Cobra’s fingers—his nipples ached, even now, both with the memory of that torture and the hunger for more of it. His ass constricted and convulsed painfully around the slave’s thickness, as if it was the source of that fire; he concentrated to  _ relax _ , relax, to surge and milk his prick, and bucked his hips up against his lap in messy thrusts that were meant to show his gratitude. “If you will it,” he repeated, by now mostly forgetting what he was saying. Merely remembering the urgency. “Only then, I swear.”   
  
Broad hands came against Cobra’s body like worship. With open palms against his ribs, nudging fingertips into his flesh just to feel him breathe and work into their mating, he pushed his thumbs rough against the piercings at his nipples and rolled and pinched them in all the ways his lips and teeth ached to. The heat was unrelenting, dragged into him more and more with every termination of Cobra’s hips against his ass. His grip fell down to the man’s thighs, then, to sweep from back to front over thick muscle, imagining what they’d once looked like under circus lights. His own legs fell around the back of his hips, and his neck craned back in offering—he didn’t expect he had anything of any value to  _ say _ , and so if Cobra saw fit to shut him up with a tightening of his grip, so be it.

Until then, he would beg. With his body and his mouth. Pulling at his ass, his shoulders, living out every childhood fantasy and wanting  _ more _ . Wanting to turn over and push his face into those cushions, like it was soil again. “Please,” groaning whorish, even as he was stuffed full and the rocking cockhead against his prostate made his vision dark. Grasping his own dick and stroking himself frantic.

  
  


COBRA -

 

He didn't understand yet. The bitter, manic smile on Cobra's lips tightened into a grimace. "Not about will," he muttered, fingers tightening as his hips slammed against the thick muscle of Sig's rump, grining himself up against his walla while he felt the heat of the oil against the full length of his cock, sharper and more maddening along the strip of golden studs. Moaning, his thrusts became shallow, faster, seeking pleasure with more urgency as he watched the colour in Sig's face darken with heavy-lidded eyes.    
  
His fingers relented after a time, letting him take a few breaths before he kissed him again, stealing the breath from his throat. Thumbs grazed roughly over nipples before hands dragged down and around his chest, taking handfuls of flesh, holding him close. Chest on chest, shoulder to shoulder, he no doubt bumped the wound, his teeth on the other side of Sig's neck now, biting and sucking blood closer to the skin to add more marks to the mess he had made there, matching the finger marks he squeezed into the mans sides. Faster still, gasping, breath hot against the blond's skin, the churning in his balls fighting hard with the exquisite heat of the oil. When he did cum, it was with a silent scream, cock still grinding deep in the man's ass. After a few moments the cry gained sound, something raw and animal and only vaguely resembling Sigvard's name. 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Very quickly, Sigvard’s mind turned to the delirium of pain. He had borne the little tortures, and Cobra had seen it, and delivered him bigger ones; his hands and his cock and his mouth each doing their excruciating damages until the Northlander’s painful shouting echoed against stone and came back sharper against their naked, working bodies. When he could breathe. When his lungs didn’t burn for air; when he wasn’t blinded and dizzy with suffocation.   
  
Every contact between his and the slave’s body was as kind to him as hot coals, and with every nerve consumed with fire, pleasure was fleeting. He glimpsed it. In one moment, it had him in its grips; in the next, it was seeping out of him to be replaced by Cobra’s agonizing inventions. Even now, even as he felt him come. His seed like liquid iron in his belly. His voice crying out with all the aching energy still trapped in Sigvard’s muscle and bone.   
  
“Stay, stay, keep your prick in me,” he hissed, his hand working in a frenzy to bring himself back around to pleasure while the man was lingering in orgasm. Mewling, shaking, even left alone. At the anguish still wracking him, yes; and the fucking inefficacy of his left hand. A little better if he could fuck himself on Cobra’s softening dick.

Stiffening, suddenly, his lungs were unable to produce much more than the smallest noises that ripped hoarse through his throat and fell into open air. His balls emptied themselves of everything in a thick and streaky mess across his stomach, and of a little more when he dragged his thick thighs up against his body. Trembling, still. He’d borne every torture, every bit of it, and  _ well _ , he’d thought. But it had the effect of weakening him, of making his body take some time to reacquaint itself with which way was up, and the delicate difference between a lashing and a feather’s touch. Everything was the former, and the latter, all at once. All his skin hummed.   
  
Fire followed Cobra’s prick as it left him. Dribbling, with his cum, down into the bed. He fidgeted against it, and pushed himself up all of one inch before his arm gave out to the pain in his shoulder. Eyes open to slivers, watching Cobra. “Will you come down here?” His thick and quivering mass was unfit to move, he decided. “Will you kiss me?”

  
  


COBRA -

 

He recoiled at the begging, the ache of continued sensation upon over-sensitised flesh making his body spasm and his face contort. Fists balled tight and he struggled despite some evident will to keep his prick sheathed inside the man, blue eyes darting to the door over his shoulder. Bath; the thought would always come, a longing for the cleanse of water to wash the sin off his back. To wipe the cum away, make the memory dimmer. Raising up, he watched the man spill his load all over his stomach; the eroticism of the act, an orgasm one part wanted and one part reviled due to the burn, was not lost on him. If his own cock hadn't felt so hot, perhaps he even could have gotten hard again. As it was, he pull himself free, shifting back an inch with a quick glance at the shiny mess between them.    
  
The way Sigvard spoke painted the distance between them to be even greater than it actually was. Cobra's eyes narrowed suspiciously, extra paranoid in the crystal-clear aftermath of his recklessness. "You said you want it to hurt," he pointed out, staying upright. It then became clear that even now, he smelled retaliation everywhere. He'd spent too long in the snake pit for trust to come easily.    
  
"Do you know I hate you just as much as I love you, Sigvard?" he asked, reaching out for his hands. He held them gently but it was the kind of gentle with a dangerous edge to it; an action with too much thought. Fingers slid up his forearms, pushing down at the joints of his elbows, keeping his arms in place against the mattress. His lips, flushed and plump from previous attentions, hovered above the man as he leaned down. "I don't think that will ever change." Finally, a kiss. Soft. Brief.    
  
"Can you stand?" he asked. "Can you bathe?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Even mired as he was in the haze of pleasure, the Northlander wasn't oblivious to Cobra's sudden caution; but he was wholly  _ dismissive _ of it, shaking his head faintly. Yes, he'd said he wanted it to hurt. And it had hurt, and the whole encounter had been delicious and satisfying in ways he was unused to being satisfied. The man didn't have to worry about revenge. Although it was probably best that he did.   
  
_ Could he stand? _ No, no, not at all. He belonged here among the cushions, limp and heavy, as he worked out where he ended and the world began. But he nodded; and, carefully, began to separate himself from the warm and inviting nest beneath. He could bear the unbearable, and keep moving. That was his monstrosity. Of course, it did help him along to hear that he was loved—and hated, too.   
  
He was sitting, inspecting himself, rearranging his bandages. He cleared his throat of most of its hoarseness. "You aren't meant to be seen like this, hm?" A nod, to indicate his foot. "I can fetch water. Or we can sneak you in." Broad palms slapped at his own chest, making a show of his hardiness, as if that fucking  _ burning _ up his ass wasn't still driving him half-mad. "I could throw you over my shoulder and carry you. I think they've stopped minding us by now."

  
  



	7. Searching for Meaning

COBRA -

 

Cobra scoffed lightly at the man's caution, or perhaps it was his baravado when he was clearly in a worse condition than him. A soldier's pride, maybe. "Hamad is a lot less social than he seems," he croaked, following the blond's example of clearing his throat as he grabbed a shawl and threw it over his shoulders in a weak attempt at modesty before limping out into the hall. "The only guests he entertains are ambassadors and the King. The court don't live in the palace; they go back to their own homes after meals. Navan is full of grand households." It was true; between the fleeting guests and scarce guards inside the walls, albeit double the patrols outside them, another soul was hard to come by in Hamad's house. Another reason, maybe, why he'd finally given up and decided to leave.   
  
When they finally reached it, Cobra did not so much throw himself into the pool as he did wilt into it, bandages, shawl and all. The brightly-coloured fabric clung to his skin like a second layer, twisting like a rope when he pulled it from his shoulders and tossed it onto the tiles. He wasted no decorum, washing the oil from his cock furtively just as the skin demanded it be done. Sig would be in an even worse state.    
  
"I am not looking forward to the desert," he groused, voice sounding better now. "I hate feeling unclean. I hate  _ cum _ ; the smell of it, yet there's no way to rut without it." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard, for his part, made no attempt at modesty when he heard that they'd likely be alone in the halls; and so he was unfettered by clothing when he dipped into cool water. A great, long sigh left him as he did. It swathed his legs, where oil and cum had trickled down, and kissed his skin where the slave's biting mouth had been, and stole away the heat of pain from his tortured nipples.   
  
He was careful not to lower himself too much, though; wet bandages were worse than wounds themselves, and he didn't want to risk ginger-water creeping into broken flesh. Eyes closed, he leaned his heavy back against the wall. A bit tricky, but he could manage it, he thought: His left arm on the ledge beneath the water was enough to lift him to buoyancy, and so he drew his bent legs up, and spread them wide so that he could play thick fingers at his hole. Nudging away that oil, and the first traces of that milky cum. Then, with the smallest of complaints, pushing inside himself to draw out what he could.   
  
On the subject. "Certainly there is," he mused, faintly, as he did his gentle work. "Our women—the particular ones—they might stuff their cunts with a goat's bladder and do it that way." Granted, he didn't much enjoy the particular ones, but he was nothing if not willing to make a sacrifice. "I'd fuck you with a bladder, if you like." A smile fell on his lips, and he rocked his head back to turn his blindness to the ceiling. "You on your knees, so you empty yourself into the dust." Utterly serious, too, in spite of the grin. He'd done the best he could with the fire inside him, he thought, but his fingers still rocked lazily into his tightness.

"It would never work the other way—not with your piercings, you'd shred the thing apart. But I don't mind cum. I adore it." The smell, the taste, the sensation of it surging from a twitching cock. "You can finish down my throat when you fuck me, if it bothers you that much, hm?"   
  
Now his eyes opened to slivers, and he tilted his head barely to watch the man across. His hand still working its impression of fucking himself. "And why does it? Your quarters are a mess. You don't strike me as overly caught up in cleanliness."

  
  


COBRA -

 

Cobra finished bathing quickly as he always did, swimming to the opposite edge of the bath and sitting up on the tiled edge, bringing his injured foot up over one knee to remove the sodden bandages. It had healed to a scab already, though it had been pulled and shifted in some places from the fucking and the walking and the water to soften it up. No matter; he'd redress it back in his room. Might as well make the most of the abundance of everything that Hamad's household had to offer. Save his carefulness for the desert.   
  
"Repulsive." The comment was laced with curiousity but nevertheless it was genuine. He tilted his head to one side as he watched the man clean out his ass, trying not to titter at the display since the need for it was his own fault. To kill a goat just for one fuck sounded wasteful, even to a man who'd been living in the lap of luxury for years. "And you'd suck my cock straight from you ass, too?" He raised his eyebrows. "There's no end to you Northerners' depravity." Huffing with laughter, he cupped water in his hands and rubbed it over his face. The bath was still relatively clean on his side of the water.    
  
"Perhaps I'll just use your mouth, hm?" he offered the idea, clearly smug with his straightforward solution. "Or make you use your hands..."   
  
The smirk faded somewhat at the man's pestering. "A mess of cloth doesn't bother me," he answered, defensive. " I just don't like the smell. It reminds me of the night tent from all those years ago, and that puts me in a bad mood."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Giving Cobra's straightforward solution some consideration, Sigvard decided he wouldn't mind it. Day after day after day worshipping the slave's prick with his fingers and mouth and throat. His ass would get lonesome, after a time, but he could manage in the way he was managing now. So he wouldn't mind it, all told.   
  
At last, he slipped his fingers from himself, delighting in the sudden chill of the water that wrapped 'round them. Legs down from the whorish show, he waded to the other man's front, and curled his hands around the uninjured foot beneath the water. Drawing his fingers up, delicate, around his calf.   
  
His brow pinched at this  _ night tent _ , this thing. He hadn't heard the term, of course, but the idea of the stench of cum and a nighttime show put him somewhere in the right area. At first, imagining men  _ in _ the stands, instead of  _ under _ them like he'd done, and Cobra contorted and working himself to pleasure, maybe—an innocent enough interpretation. But even that was enough to make his heart leap and race and put an icy panic in him. His mind was torn up in violence: He was remembering Cobra's words, the ones that described horrors that couldn't quite translate to images in his mind, the ones he'd made such an effort to block out entirely because of how useless and childish they'd made him feel. ' _ Made _ to fuck,' and not here, not with Hamad.   
  
He dipped his head low, pushing his lips in softness to the inside of the slave's knee. Like an offering left quietly at an altar. "You won't smell it again, then. My mouth and hands will serve you, and if I cum myself, I'll fuck off and have myself clean before you can catch a whiff of me."  _ If _ , if. "Or we can drink rosewater until we both taste sweet." A tradition among prized whores, he doubted many of Cobra's patrons would have the flowery smell to them. "We'll find some arrangement. You won't smell it."

 

COBRA -

 

Blue eyes watched like a hawk as the man approached, narrowing at the touch to his foot. As long as the caress was gentle, Cobra seemed inclined to tolerate  it, the faint shift in muscle tensions in his shoulders seen by any careful eye. Sig had been a soldier, hadn't he? Cobra would have liked to say that there had been a prouder sort in the night tent, but it had been all sorts as long as they could pay the entrance fee. He'd fucked Lords long before he came to Navan and crossed paths with Hamad. He'd probably had more hands on his body than all the gods had between them. And now he was fated to have more hands on his still: around his throat.   
  
"I can tolerate it, for a time," he murmured, gaze drifting away. For a time. Until he couldn't. Until he took a fruit knife to someone's eyes, or his teeth to the hands that offended him. Until he found a can of kerosene. Cobra took a slow, deep breath, reach out to cup Sig's temples in his hands. "You are foul," he delivered the news gently.  "More whorish than me, a whore. Yet I don't want to hurt you, at least not enough to cause any lasting harm. Why is that, Sigvard? What did you do to protect yourself from me?" He tilted his head to one side with a twitch of a smile. "Is it some secret Northland magic?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Accustomed to hearing the insult, and many things like it, Sigvard only needed to roll his shoulders a little to bear it. He let himself move between Cobra's thighs as he spoke, matching the tender touch to the sides of his head with gentle fingertips walking up and up and up the slave's either leg. The accusation of sorcery made him grin and shake his head. "You'd know if it was magic, I think. I don't have the subtlety for it."   
  
Closer, still, pushing his chest against the ledge. "Anyway, it's a woman's craft. I'm quite enough of an effeminate disgrace in my country by virtue of taking cocks; if I engaged in sorcery, they'd bury me as  _ Sigvarda. _ " Not wholly a joke—his love of being stuffed full with a good prick was one of his  _ many _ unnatural dishonours in the Northlands—but he seemed to find it funny, regardless. Foul, exactly as Cobra described.   
  
"Maybe foulness is what your heart is after," he mused, lifting a hand to take the slave's so that he could keep it still; he turned his cheek and then his lips into it to kiss. "Maybe you've had quite enough of these fine men who don't understand that their place is at your feet." He was deliberate, then, in the way he looked up. "Not in the way I understand it."

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra quirked his eyebrows, thinking of the visions and the Urdai tales that every Keht has been a man. If magic was to be a woman’s craft, perhaps the visions were something different. Or the Northlander’s were simply full of shit. There was always that. The thought made him laugh.

“I remember when my hair was long enough to braid,” he mused, running his fingers through the short crop of curls that he had originally hacked off with a dagger. “They did treat me like a woman, yes. At least, the ones who didn’t want to take my cock.” Shaking his head, he smiled and allowed the man to kiss his hand, watching with heavy-lidded eyes.

“Maybe that is it,” he mused, willing to humour the blond. Truthfully, though, he did not know how they would go about their impossible mission and to bound himself so closely to the Urdai would be taxing in its own way.

“I’ll have to change my name, you know,” he pointed out to the other, stroking his hair. “The prophet of the Urdai is always called Keht. Urd, the chief, told me that.”

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

A deep noise rumbled in Sigvard's chest as he considered the name, although his pinched brow quickly gave away the fact he was first set against it. He didn't like these 'have to' things; he didn't like to hear that this or that was 'always' done one way or the other. Though the name was marginally less offensive a fate than being routinely choked, granted.   
  
It was a terrible thing to be parted from those hands in his hair; but they were rocking him to sleep in their gentle motions against his scalp, and as it was only mid-morning, he didn't think he could justify a nap. So he pushed his massive body from the water, and went to the bench where a stack of towels sat replenished.   
  
"Is that what you want to be called?" Snatching up one towel for Cobra and two for himself, he wandered back to the poolside to drape the slave's over his shoulders. "Keht." Just to try it on. "Should I call you that, hm? I liked  _ Cobra. _ " Evident, in the way he framed the name like a prayer. "Did your mother give you 'Cobra'? Or did you pick it up later on?"

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra grimaced. “It does not seem to matter what I  _ want _ to called,” he groused. “It never has. Slaves don’t choose their names, even more so than the children of freemen do not choose them.” He sighed, reluctant to look back on the early years of his life when his mother had still been alive. He had not been allowed to spend much time with her and bonding had been scarce, but better her than the ringleader.

“The man who ran the circus,” He glowered. “He was the one who named me. To match the act. When I was young and still training, I had another name, I think. But Cobra is the only one I remember.” His mother, too, was nameless, known only as Mama to him.

He sat back further on the tiles, inching away from Sigvard and bringing his aching foot up to dry. It hurt to flex his foot, so he kept his toes pointed, sitting with his legs beside him like the woman so many Northlanders would make him out to be.

“You will call me Keht if you don’t wish to upset the Urdai. They seemed... zealous,” his eyes narrowed slightly with the observation. “And determined to be free. I know that much.”

 

SIGVARD -

 

Having dried himself during Cobra's explanation in his usual, rigorous way, Sigvard knelt on cool stone behind the slave and set to drying him: Broad hands smoothed the towel over his back, and his thumbs worked in circles that served to massage the knots from tight muscle as much as they did to wick away the wetness.   
  
"It matters to me what you want to be called," he muttered, his tone more matter-of-fact than sentimental. They were skirting territory that was much too complicated for his simple mind, and he was trying to find his way back to something straightforward. "When we're away from them, when we're alone. I'll call you Cobra until you tell me something else." Working cotton down the lengths of his arms, then, squeezing at his muscles to make them limp and heavy. "Keht, fine, if you fall in love with it after all, or something else entirely—a new name along with your new brand, hm?" Fingertips, too. Rolling every joint in luxurious slowness.   
  
The stone was starting to wear on his knees. He fell to his ass instead, and let his thick legs fall on either side of the southerner. "I expect I'll upset the Urdai regardless, anyway. Bizarre people." He understood the nomadic lifestyle from experience, but that was out of necessity; he couldn't understand why anyone would go from place to place to place, much less those un-places of the middle of the desert. "Will they tolerate me among them, do you think? What place will I have—will I be close to you?"

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra had half a mind to make some kind of mean-spirited comment, perhaps about how Sigvard was one of the most caring whores he’d ever met, but he just couldn’t muster up the bad sentiment to say such a thing. Humming, he shifted back against the man’s thick frame, eyes flickering in and out of focus as the man’s string fingers worked over his muscles. Truth be told, he had ever felt much attachment to any name, Keht, Cobra nor any other, but he liked the way that Sig’s addresses slipped, hallowed, from his throat.

“Those are my people,” he pointed out with a grumble, cracking one eye open at the comment. He certainly was determined to be more Urdai than Northlander in any case, though it wasn’t the likes of Sigvard he was deadset on distancing himself from. “They are strange because they are old,” he shrugged. “Most things from before the boats came are. You will not be so conspicuous, I think. The Urdai used to speak with the goatherds in the mountains. I saw a few paler faces among them during my time in the desert. Rare, but there.”

Reaching up, he curled his fingers around the man’s good arm, pulling it closer to his body, tucking the hand under his chin. Lips parted to gnaw lightly at the man’s knuckles in a much gentler echo of the injury he had inflicted in earlier hours. He was reminded of a dog with a bone. “You will be close to me,” he promised, keeping hold of the man’s arm. “I will make sure of it. And sleep with you, in any case, even f it means I have Urd breathing down my neck on the other side of me.” He have a quiet, scoffing laugh. “He may be angry I refused the role of Keht those years ago. I suppose he’ll have to learn to forgive.”

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard drew a long, deep breath that swelled his chest against Cobra's naked back; he was content to let the man take his hand and chew it gently, and draped his other arm heavy about his waist to hold him tight. The task of towelling him off was forgotten. The promise wasn't as comforting as it should have been, or otherwise it was all wrapped up in imagery that gave the Northlander so many more questions than answers. His head was heavy with them, and so he dipped his chin to rest in the crook of Cobra's neck.    
  
A little affirmative hum, at that last thought. Yes, he would have to learn. The reunion with the Urdai, the uplifting of Cobra to Keht to godhood; like their manic plot to kill the southern king, it was all an inevitable conclusion in Sig's mind. So Urd would have to learn to forgive. Urd would have to wrench his head from up his own ass, it sounded like. But they would come to that later.   
  
"Will he fuck you?" His priorities abundantly clear. His capacity for jealousy, too, in the way his frowning lips had framed it. The Northlander's arms coiled tighter, like some fat, pink, monstrous snake, tugging the slave's body against his own. "Is that part of it, the arrangement?"

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra scoffed quietly, feeling the warmth from the man's big body behind him but not struggling against the grip. "You really have a one-track mind," he drawled, letting his head loll to one side. Again, like so many times before, he felt more like an object than a person. It was fitting, then, in a way, that he would imagine himself to be something other than simply human. A prophet. A deity. Better that than a doll.   
  
"He has already fucked me," he delivered the news bluntly. "Many men have. What difference does it make?" His voice had sharp edges of impatience. This was new and unchartered territory for Cobra; to have someone who cared about the others who touched him, to encounter jealousy beyond the fleeting moments of delusion during a five-copper fuck. Even Hamad passed him around like a shisha pipe, and why wouldn't he? Property. Slave.   
  
"I don't know if it is part of the arrangement," he sighed. "I know about the choking. About staying with the tribe, using the visions to lead them through the desert. I know Urd always stayed close when he had hopes I would become the next Keht. I do not know if the fucking was a part of it."

 

SIGVARD -

 

There was a strange sort of quietness about the room, when neither of them were speaking. The still water and flat stone seemed to reflect the silence back at them—it seemed to crowd his ears in all its emptiness. He closed his eyes to it, and turned his mouth to Cobra's bared neck. It wasn't meant to be lewd, the way he parted his lips and brushed them against the fine dry hair of his skin; but, like an instinct, he couldn't quite resist the temptation to taste him with a slip of his tongue.   
  
The Northlander's arms unfurled a little. His fingers wanted to give Cobra's body attentions instead, and so he drew up that towel again to the front of the slave's lap, and nudged it softly down the length of his thighs.   
  
He didn't like not knowing, one way or the other. If it  _ was _ tradition, if fucking was involved in whatever ridiculous ceremony or arrangement that had hands around Cobra's neck, he might have shut himself up; for he was beginning to learn (at last) that speaking badly of the Urdai rubbed Cobra the wrong way, but was also perfectly aware that he had nothing  _ good _ to say of them.   
  
And if it wasn't tradition, after all?

"You shouldn't fuck anyone you don't want to fuck," he put forth, with the blunt honesty and simple position of a toddler. His wide hands curled under the man's thighs, pushing cotton up into the crease of his ass. "Your brand is struck, now, and you're no longer bound to anyone in that way." Lifting his lids to watch the shimmering bath, he couldn't lose the image in his mind's eye of Cobra, the night before, drinking laced tea from Hamad's pampered hand. Knowing what was coming for him, and seeming to think nothing of it.  _ Nothing _ , not hesitation, not eagerness. "You shouldn't fuck me, if you don't want to, and you shouldn't fuck Urd."   
  
Both hands came under the injured knee to bend it, and to cradle his calf so that there was no strain on the wound as he dried him. A sort of snag caught his lungs, and his skin went hot in a sudden flush. "I love you a great deal, I think. It's maddening to think of you being made to do something you don't want to do. Like Hamad's covenant." Giving the man back his leg, he went to work on the other one. "And to think of you hurt—all cut up, like in your vision." He'd shut up by now about the choking, but it was easy enough to shut up when it was just talk; he didn't quite know what he'd do when he first  _ saw _ the act.   
  
"And to think of someone else pleasing you, too, yes. I want to be the one who milks all that unbearable cum from you, and washes you, and all that. I don't want you to enjoy anyone's ass or cock but mine."

  
  


COBRA -

 

The advice made Cobra frown, for he had been doing things he had not wanted to do since he was born. He had done these things, and they had kept him alive. With decades of survival behind him, Sigvards' words seemed like meere hedonistic folly. Despite the allure of the lips at his neck, the gentle touches to his skin with the fresh towel, he squirmed, managing to wriggle free from the heat created by his flushed skin. The fervor of his adoration. Cobra had encountered men with feelings like this before, but never quite so strongly. Never someone who would not be on the road again in just a few days with much lighter pockets.    
  
On his hands and knees, he faced him, spine taking on a small arc of apprehension like some wild animal. Not quite backed into a corner, but standoffish nonetheless. The tiles were hard under the grip of his fingers. Eyes narrowed, he took a moment to mull over his choice of words, biting back instinctive vitriol.    
  
"You mean to consume me," the accusation came quiet, smoky. "Fucking is fleeting. You should not think of it so much. You cannot own me, Sigvard, not even if you pay in love. Everyone who owns an Urdai meets with a terrible fate. You would do better not to think of such things before you get hurt." And yet hurt he would be, even now, Cobra knew. His lips curled with a distaste for it. As easily as being cruel could come to him, he did not like to do it now, not with him. Yet at the same time, it was better to be firm now than see him shattered later at a more crucial time. At least, that was what he hoped. He flinched as a flash of the bloody tree crossed his mind.

"I can be strong enough to withstand these things," he whispered, shoulders hunching as his blue eyes broke contact with Sig's face. "I can do it. I just... It is easier, with someone there to care for me." His jaw clenched, feeling dirty with the admission. Weak. "You cannot keep me safe, but you can be there."

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

If Sigvard was at all inclined to  _ think _ , he might have seen the sense in what Cobra was saying and gone along with it. But his habit of mistaking possessiveness for devotion had never once been corrected, and so he took the slave's sudden departure and warning words about as terribly as expected. His legs crossed, hearing him speak. A cold weight took his heart and pushed an aching itch up from his stomach into his throat and held it there. He couldn't articulate the wrongness of it, and he didn't try to—it was a little to do with hurt pride, and tenfold as much about loneliness and a painful awareness of the wretchedness of his continued existence. None of which he wanted to put into words. None of which he was capable.   
  
He lifted a heavy arm, slowly, and nudged blunt fingers just into the curl of Cobra's hair. Not quite ignorant of the space the man had put between them, and not wholly respectful of it either; though his hand at least seemed to ask permission before going so far as to sink against his scalp and pet him like the beast he was making himself out to be.   
  
"I'll care for you, then," he murmured. "You'll do what must be done, and I'll look after you. I'll be alongside you." It didn't much strike him as weakness, this talk. Cobra was demanding  _ not _ to be spared his fate; he was demanding to confront whatever he was meant to confront, entirely unprotected. If there was any ugliness about the thing in his mind, it was only that he wouldn't have the chance to prove his own strength, and to bleed for his god in the way any man ought to.   
  
"Am I meant to do just that, and hold no affection for you?" A genuine question, tinged with the cheerlessness of being half-resigned already to the answer he didn't want to hear. "And you to hold no affection for me?" All his limbs felt useless, heavy on stone. "If that's what you ask of me, I'll give it—but I'll have some of that shark's venom, after all, I think. Later, to sleep."

 

COBRA -

 

Dusky fingers curled around the man's wide wrist, stilling the attempts at petting his hair but otherwise not pulling his hand away. Cobra held it fast, his blue eyes burning with resolve. "I did not say that," he said sternly, fingers tightening enough to make the tendeds shift against the bone in Sigvard's wrist. "It is not that I hold no affection for you, Sigvard, but I do not trust you, yet. You mean to consume me," he repeated, grimacing as he adjusting his footing. The flex on his his sole while using his toes to balance on all fours made the cut ache. He pointed the toe instead, dipping down  lower on that side.    
  
"I don't believe you when you talk so much of some monk-like devotion. You're too hungry for it. It would not be long until you do something stupid or dangerous. I know because I have seen other men do other stupid things for love. I have seen them do even worse things for obsession, too." FInally, he let the hand go, hand moving to the ground again to support himself as he crawled forward, keeping most of his weight on his knees.    
  
"Perhaps I should fuck Urd," he said, watching the man's reaction like a hawk. "Perhaps I should make you watch . Would that make you angry, Sigvard? What would that make you do?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

He wondered what Cobra wanted to see in him, then, watching him as he did. Was it the souring of his face, so transparently injured and suddenly wary of the creature across from him? The gentle way his body swayed slightly back, away from the man who had come too close? The curl in his shoulders. The setting of his jaw.   
  
"Yes, it would make me angry." He spoke lowly, deliberately, with every consonant hard and sharp, deepening his accent, as if he was having difficulty concentrating on speaking, on thinking past the grief scraping blunt at his ribcage from the inside out. "But I would bear it, because you would have me bear it, the same as anything." Sounding resolute, yes, but utterly miserable.   
  
"You talk of stupid and dangerous things—I took Hamad's knife for you this morning, I took your bite that could rot and have me dead in a week. I knew it could be the end of me, it might still, and I took it regardless. Wasn't I stupid and dangerous then?" The uneasy tension in his face seemed to break in an airy and humourless laugh that quickened his heart and his breathing. His twitching brow, his fleeing eyes seeming to finally realize how thoroughly he may have fucked himself. "You didn't object to my devotion when I bled for you, when I signed away my life with your teeth in my flesh. When I've promised to take you from this place and look after you, you don't mind my devotion then. But love is too much."   
  
The complications of thinking were making their way down from his face into his shoulders, his arms. Not quite knowing where to put themselves. He was too hungry for it. He knew that, better than Cobra did; he'd been living with that sore desperation for years and years, since last seeing that face that now visited him in nightmares. It was selfish, and he knew it. And that was maybe the only reason he didn't fight to have it now.

 

COBRA -

 

The most dangerous thing about what he was saying was that he could see himself doing it. It would be easy; plump hips dusted with red sand, long, cool shadows cast by the early rays of sunlight when the desert was still cool from the relief of night. Sigvard's gnashing teeth. It would not do to make him hate Urd, a man who had done no wrong other than put the welfare of his troubled people above all other things. That was expected; treachery from one of his own or his angry, pale pet, was not. Cobra had enough morals for that, at least.   
  
"Yes," he said evenly, rising up into a kneel as he placed his hands on the man's thick shoulders. "Those were the very things I used to make my assessment. You are reckless, Sigvard, and your love for me will make you know a pain far more maddening than any knife can bring." His hand lay flat over the bite wound, pressing gently. Even that would hurt, he knew, but he did not relent, only leaning forward to plant a kiss on the man's cheek. Was this what a god was, he wondered? Not able to love in the same way as a man, but not quite as uncaring as that same man would make him out to be. Something guarded and confusing.   
  
"You won't rot," he promised. "I won't let you. As dangerous as you are, I am used to living with dangerous things, even sharing my bed with them. And you are useful to me, Sigvard." With a ghost of a smile, he took his hand away from the wound, caressing the man's face. "Doesn't that make you happy?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard's eyes didn't leave the stone floor, and by now he was numb to all the slave's usual touches; both the malicious and gentle sort that would delight him if only they weren't slogging through such miserable territory. His head was all clouded up with confusion. He shook it, as if to be free of it. It didn't work. "To be useful to you? No—I know, by now, that I'm useful to you." He was simple, but not quite so much that being reminded that he was a good tool to have around would excite him. The aching wound in his shoulder was beginning to tell him more and more of that, regardless.   
  
He mulled over his own tongue in quietude. Cobra couldn't say whether or not the wound would be the end of him; he hadn't seen it, surely? He didn't know it now, and he didn't know it when he'd made the brand. He'd done nothing to warn away Sigvard's devotion, then. He'd  _ encouraged _ it. But now? Now it was like hot coals. If the Northlander was meant to be afraid of stupid and dangerous acts, why hadn't he stopped him from taking Hamad's knife? Why had he coerced him into being bitten?   
  
"You've made your point, I think," he muttered. It could only be that all this business about Sigvard getting hurt was lies. Lies Cobra was telling the Northlander, or lies the slave was telling himself. To be hurt didn't matter; to be devoted and stupid and dangerous didn't matter. It only mattered that he did these things to his godling's advantage. He ought only to be  _ useful _ , and that was the end of it. "Are you finished? Let me take you back to your quarters, and I'll bandage you again."

 

COBRA -

 

"I have, but whether or not it has been understood remains to be seen," Cobra drawled, the energy he'd expended on his dramatic little outburst beginning to weigh on his shoulders. With a sigh and a smile, his other hand lifted to caress the other side of the man's face, tugging him forward slightly to get a better look at his eyes. Blue. Like his. He'd spent many nights spying upon his own reflection in a cup of water cast by moonlight, wishing for his eyes to be brown, or gold, or even that Navanese sea-green. It would seem that blue eyes were unavoidable for Cobra. Or... Keht. Getting used to the name would take the longest time, he was sure.   
  
"Come, then," he cooed to the larger man, shakily getting to his feet and putting his weight on his good foot. "Carry me. If you do it without dropping me, you can sleep with your cock between my thighs. Or I can dope you with enough sleeper shark venom to make the world feel as soft as water, if you promise not to become an addict."

 

SIGVARD -

 

That long, long look in his eyes and sudden separation struck him as the  _ very _ intentional denial of a kiss; and so, with his poor overloaded mind stuffed full with another lesson he didn't fully understand, Sigvard stood.   
  
There would be no dignified way to carry him. But chest-to-chest was the least offensive, he thought; better than throwing him over his shoulder, and better than scooping him up like a bride. Anyway, as he wrapped one arm around his waist and the other under his ass—like hauling a child off to bed—he at least had the opportunity to tuck his face into the nape of his neck, partly to steal a little of his warmth, partly to communicate his despair. He was a kicked dog; injured, yes, but not without the stubborn hope that he was deserving of tenderness. He'd take it where he could get it.   
  
The bathing had taken them somewhere into the afternoon; the sun was still high and baking the earth in a dry heat that still wouldn't be too oppressive for training. He'd have to acclimatize himself to the weight and the balance of southern steel, and speak to an herbalist about best preparing his body to keep in the middle of the goddamn desert (for he'd felt near-death no less than three times in the trek south), and all those other things. It would be a long, long day away from Cobra. And perhaps that was for the best.   
  
In the cool shade of the slave's quarters, he set him down as gently as he could manage near the cushions; and, ever dutiful, took up his position at his feet. There were still bandages on the table, and he collected them up without speaking. One wrap for his hand again, tossing aside soaked fabric. And then a long, long strip prepared for Cobra's foot. "I'll bring you lunch, after," he announced. "Grapes, hm? It'll be some time before you see another grape; you'll want to stuff yourself full." And him, of course, with those figs. The incident with feverweed hadn't quite ruined them for him. "Tell me—when did you see the Urdai last?"

 

COBRA -

 

Hands looped around the man's back to spare his shoulders, Cobra peered out at the world from over Sigvard's shoulder, brooding. He'd upset his newest and only disciple, he could tell, but he was standing firm by his convictions and knowledge of past experiences. If Sigvard's selfish notions were coddled, it would be dangerous. Better to weed it out now before it festered into something with roots so deep that it never truly left. It was better this way, he told himself.    
  
Deposited on the cushions, he narrowed his eyes as he looked up at the man who was announcing his plans to leave. "I see," he murmured, somewhat cold. He couldn't sulk about it now without seeming like a hypocrite; he'd just told him to keep a degree of separation between them, after all. Remaining silent while the man bandaged his foot, he shook his head. "The servants will bring food," he explained. "Hamad will still provide for us while I am here because he wants me to return after our task is done. He knows better than to spite me something so trivial."

Once his foot was bandaged, the slave was determined to keep the man there for a while longer, insisting on redressing his shoulder in the same way his foot had been, disinfecting it again with the alcohol. "It was on the way south from the mountains, past the trading outpost next to an oasis... I don't know the name," he explained slowly with a furrow in his brow. "They told me that they follow the ancient, dried-out river valley south to reach the coast every year, but if their Keht leads them in a different direction, they'll follow. It seems like it would be impossible to find them, but the coast seems like the safest bet. Not to mention we'll be less likely to die ourselves if we hug the coastline."

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard seemed to listen only with one ear, nodding along, paying just enough attention to get a grasp of Cobra's meaning and no more or less than that. He was much more keenly interested in how he bandaged him: Somewhat tender, somewhat inelegant, and with a childlike authority, as if he hadn't been taught how to do it by the selfsame Northlander just that morning.   
  
He hadn't really meant to ask about logistics, although that was very helpful; what had prompted the question was an interest in how the slave had  _ felt _ about his last encounter. He could imagine why he'd refused the offer of Keht, given where he was coming from. But would he have liked to stay with them, if he wasn't obligated to be their prophet? Was he passing through either way, or would he have made himself a home (inasmuch as a nomad could have a home) if he wasn't doomed to be regularly throttled and to have his dreams dictate the lives and deaths of dozens of his kinsmen?   
  
He would have clarified his position, maybe, if Cobra wasn't so fucking intent on spurning him over and over and over. He couldn't put into words the rush in his chest when he hadn't been allowed so much as the dutiful pleasure of getting him  _ grapes _ . Not even that much! Hearing his dismissal had kicked the air from Sig's lungs, and his next breath was thick and aching, like he was only drawing smoke. It burned him from the inside out, all through that clumsy bandaging.   
  
So he let the man think it was logistics, after all, in case he was punished again for being sentimental. And when his bandage was tucked neatly into itself, he was swiftly on his feet to find the very remarkable pants he'd abandoned earlier. "I did not drop you," he reminded, quietly. "I'll be some hours—I will come for the venom tonight."


	8. Ashi

COBRA -

 

He left too quickly. One of Cobra's hands started forward, catching himself midway in the act of snatching for Sigvard's ankle and grasping uselessly at cushion tassels instead. He looked away, shoulders hunched again, giving a single nod in reply to the promise of a long absence. A return, too, but a long absence first.    
  
To say that Cobra had acted out would not be an understatement. When the blond would finally return, the first thing he would find was a tray, still covered, set outside the bedroom door. Cobra had never collected it, although it had hardly been out long enough for the selection of fruits, sweetmeats and unleavened bread with dipping oil to spoil. Perishable food was not a common practice in the warmer climates, anyway.   
  
There was a curious chaos waiting inside Cobra's room. Even more mess than usual. A length of papyrus was sprawled across the floor, still attached to the scroll winder, littered with fingerprints and smudges surrounding an image of a tree inside a circle. Cobra's fingers were still stained with the ochre-coloured ink that he had used for the artwork, though the same stains weren't present on his neck. No; the choke had come first. The marks made it clear, to a trained eye at least, that the choking had been by his own two hands. It had not been pretty, but it had been done.

The feeling of reality softening at the edges, of coloured shapes creeping, translucent, across his vision, was strong in his memories as he lay sprawled across the cushions, collarbone exposed to the ceiling. His throat was mottled with the flush of blood slowly darkening to purple bruises. Staring at the ceiling without seeing, his eyes flicked but the rest of him stayed still as the door opened. He managed a ghost of a smile before his eyes returned to the ceiling again, knowing what a state he was in. He took a slow breath.   
  
"Did..." he paused, seeming to discard the question before it even started. He stretched, sighing softly. "I wanted to see if it worked." A quick glance at the image of the tree. It wasn't worth the breath to say that it had. "Urd was right."

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Training had been good for him. A medicine, better than heartsbane or any of Cobra's other little potions, that put some vigour back into his blood and made him forget his self-pity.   
  
Having counseled Hamad for a good place to test his mettle, he'd wandered to what seemed to be the Navanese people's best impression of a barracks; there, a master had put him through some rote exercises. The effort had been mutually infuriating: His body wouldn't move in the dancelike ways demanded of him, and his stubborn refusal to  _ try _ had had his teacher shouting him off the floor within the hour.   
  
His luck had been much better in the courtyard, where some boys half his age had seemed to find something funny in the idea of teaming up to take down the pale giant. His poor mood had left him at something of a disadvantage, at first: The little fucking vipers would come up out of nowhere and whip the flats of their blades at the backs of his knees, and his ankles, and—once—directly on the bite all swathed up in bandages. But it hadn't been too long before he had found his element, and had begun to find an unnatural pleasure in kicking children onto their asses in the dust. He had been happy to play the part of hulking ogre for them, then; feigning incomprehension when they thought they were being clever by scheming in their southern tongue, and roaring in a fury he could no longer be bothered to possess, and growing giddier and giddier all the while. More at home than he had felt in years, he was almost tempted to express his gratitude in letting the giggling young things conquer him. Almost.

The visit to a local herbalist, too, had been pleasant. Helped along by the fact that the woman had been utterly impressed that he'd managed to survive the journey south to begin with. He hadn't paid much attention after that; far too preoccupied with self-regard.   
  
But no matter how the events of the afternoon had uplifted him—perhaps  _ because _ of it—he found his energy sapped more and more with every step towards those quarters with the snake on the door. Heartbreak was not so easily forgotten. That sharp and aching pain in his chest, like the twist of a knife buried deep, fiercer and fiercer. He wanted to be rid of it. That's what kept him moving—the promise of that venom waiting for him at the end of the hall. Enough to make the world feel as soft as water.   
  
Of course, the slave had other plans. He would shatter it all.

His body was rigid in the doorframe, watching Cobra's body with a hard-eyed intensity that didn't communicate a fraction of his quiet and frantic struggle not to be torn apart in ten different directions. He wanted to turn on his heel and kick that platter down the hall. The illustration—switching his gaze to it, as indicated, he wanted to see it  _ burn _ , and was only confounded in this desire by the fact that the servants were too fucking cowardly to light a fire in Cobra's hearth. He wanted to find the venom and leave. He wanted to fall to his knees and weep and weep and weep.   
  
He did none of these things. He nodded, and bent to collect the tray with trembling hands. Slow and careful strides made the distance to Cobra's bedside, and he settled himself to sit on the hardness of stone next to his mattress. His heart wouldn't stop wrenching, first in one direction, then the next. He lifted the lid, and found a bit of melon, and held it to the slave's lips. "We knew that he was right." There was some effort involved in keeping his voice from wavering. "This is something else." He thought, briefly, of having something off the plate; but his churning stomach wouldn't allow for it. "I will not leave your side again.”

 

COBRA -

 

Despite the sluggishness to the lazy, aimless movements of his feet, the slow curve of his back, Cobra's mind felt sharp and fast-paced. Twitchy. His fingers drummed on his collarbone as he took in the sight of Sigvard's tragic expression.    
  
"Do you hate me yet?" A manic smile pulling hard at one corner of his lips. "Should I take it as a challenge?" He asked gamely with a hiccup of laughter. His hand moved up, fitting perfectly over one half of the bruises around his throat and squeezing gently. "It hurts," he recalled, pointlessly, for the evidence was plain to see. "Everything moves so quickly in a vision, like a dream. The sounds don't make sense. But I remembered it all perfectly..." His voice trailed off, eyes cast back on the tree again.    
  
"Dark skin," he muttered, looking up at Sigvard. "Did you know it's not me who takes the cuts? They're already made. The capital... they came on boats. They're not Urdai and they're not Navanese. They're... lighter, like me." His lips finally spread wide enough to reveal slivers of white, gleeful teeth. "The king bears his own seal. That's why the kingslave is so fearsome. Or perhaps it's the other way around..." Letting his hand drop, he ran his fingers gratefully over his smooth stomach. "Aren't you happy?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard took a deep and deliberate breath, determined to stop those tremors in his fingers and certainly prevent them from moving up his thick arms into the whole of his body. He watched Cobra with an even eye, and kept his lips in their firm and dismal line.   
  
Of course he was not happy. Any relief he would've felt at the news that Cobra would not be pinned down and tortured by a blade was decimated by the fact that he'd pinned down and tortured  _ himself _ in the Northlander's absence, and would presumably do so again if he was ever gone for too long. Coming back to a horror like this—it broke him ways that the slave didn't yet understand. But not in a way that would produce any hatred in him.   
  
He would say none of it. He wouldn't wonder after the relationship of the kingslave and his master; he wouldn't remark on what Cobra had learned about the visions; he wouldn't ask why on earth his godling was trying to make him hate him. All these things burned in him, but they were secondary. His only mission was to ensure the slave was fed.    
  
"Yes," he said, thinly. "I am happy." No point in saying differently, and anything else would just get in the way. He wagged his hand, still holding the bit of melon. "Eat, please. I would be happier if you ate."

 

COBRA -

 

He saw the melon, examining it like a bird might examine an insect. Sigvard’s begging did not do anything to change his reaction to it, hand sliding down his body to squeeze the fat at his hips. It seemed that the slave would not stop until everything the Northlander knew and loved about him was shattered.

“I was thin, once,” he murmured, eyes narrowing. “I will be thin again.” Still, he ate the melon; any more relentless waving and the piece would have broken in Sig’s fingers. He chewed roughly and swallowed, refusing to indulge.

“I will eat three more things,” he held up the fingers to match. “I need to get used to rationing food. You do too, although you should eat more. You need to stay strong enough to kill a human with your bare hands.” He managed a smirk at this, finding humour even with the hard fact that Sig has killed and would kill again, perhaps many times but certainly at least once.

“Would you like the sleeper venom?” He wondered aloud, gaze drifting to his cabinets. “It’s very good at calming someone down; I know that personally.”

 

SIGVARD -

 

If he were in higher spirits—or any spirits at all, really—Sigvard may have objected to the idea of Cobra getting  _ thin _ . Partly because he thoroughly enjoyed those plush hips and full ass and the thighs that had been promised to him tonight. Partly. Mostly because the place of a god, in his country, was at the tip of the spear; he ought to be fighting-fit, as capable as the men who'd follow him in the responsibility of killing. A starved waif wouldn't do, in that regard.   
  
He only nodded, and looked down to the platter to find the most fattening things he could. Bread and oil, and a bit of dough drenched in syrup, and he'd try his luck at getting away with a fistful of nuts rather than just one. The rest was set apart, and he'd pick at it later if he regained his appetite.   
  
The venom. It was everything he'd been waiting for. And coming back to a scene like this—if the venom could make him forget it, his heart ached for a taste. But this scene,  _ this scene _ . If there was conflict in him, it was because of this same fucking scene: If he allowed himself to lose his mind with the venom, what would he do if Cobra thought to try to do this to himself again? How would he stop him, if the world was soft like water?   
  
His heart broke. Finding no comfort in Cobra, finding an enemy there, he let selfishness win out. "Yes, please," he murmured, as he dipped a little bread in oil and offered it up to the slave. "As much as you think I can take."

 

COBRA -

 

The man gave a grumbling hum as he was fed, recognising the man's strategy straight away. He had not meant to starve himself, simply eat little and often; when they were out in the desert with nought but dried meat and stale bread, he would understand better why Cobra wanted to wean his stomach from the luxuries of Hamad's table. Still, he ate everything the man gave him without further complaint, basking in his last few moments of idleness before he stood. The blood rushed to his head with with the sudden change in elevation, making his first few steps seemed drunken before he regained his balance as crossed the rest of the way to the cabinets.    
  
Sleeper shark venom was a slightly milky fluid, bitter to taste and only good for spiking heavily sweetened camel's milk. He held the eyedropper above his own lips first, letting a few  fall on his tongue and swallowing before he moved to straddle Sigvard's lap with a faint smile, guiding his chin upwards with one hand. He gave him five drops, too paranoid about sleeping in such an unaware state to let him have any more. The final drop was sealed with a kiss, looping his arms lazily around the man's neck as the carefree feeling began to take hold.    
  
"Mine," he murmured, nuzzling at the man's temple. "Stay with me..."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The weight of Cobra's body in his lap was an immediate relief. Sigvard signalled his gratitude for simple  _ touch _ —mistaken as gratitude for the drops, maybe—by circling his heavy arms around the slave's waist and tugging him close, chest to chest, so that his godling would feel the yearning sigh that deflated him in that kiss.   
  
There was something about his body or his mind that fought the venom. Heartache persisted, just for a moment, as his hands gripped the flesh at the southerner's sides and his teeth nipped at his departing lips. His face was complicated: His brow furrowed, his open mouth wanting to speak. Wanting to tell him how empty his hands felt without Cobra in them. Even now, even as his fingertips kneaded and worked into his waist and hips. He nodded. Stay, yes, of course. His lips turned into the crook of the man's neck, kissing sympathetically at the red and raw anger of fresh bruising. He'd stay, he'd stay. He was his.   
  
Letting his eyes fall closed was a mistake. All at once, or maybe spread out over some long minutes (it was impossible to tell in the darkness), his roaming lips and groping hands seemed to forget what they were doing. He was heavy. He leaned forward into the warm body in his lap, his forehead touching a warm, soft shoulder. It was lovely. He cooed into it, and wavered, struggling to remain upright. Arms tightened, pulling that body closer. Warm, and soft. He was so, so heavy. All of that heartache long since forgotten.

Unintelligible mumbles were supposed to be an announcement of his intentions. Thinking he'd made himself clear, he rocked forward with some momentum; landing on his own palm, thank the gods, still clutching that perfect creature close to him. Walking Cobra onto his back among the cushions, he fell nearly on top of him, his dense head laid upon his chest. Pulling himself into the crook of slave's side, he kept that thick arm around him. Kept pulling him closer, closer, as if there was an inch of space between them.   
  
Something thin and musical and distant came humming from his lips: " _ Ashi, Ashi. _ " A crude impression of a southern song, or lullaby, or some such thing. Eventually, he'd learn the word meant something like  _ peace _ .   
  
"Sing it again," he muttered. He felt he needed some calming; he didn't seem to think the venom was taking hold of him, in spite of the clear fact he was losing grips on where he was and whom he was talking to. "I didn't tell you how much it calmed me." Maybe the venom had little to do with it. Maybe it was all the exhaustion of the day. Maybe the insanity he'd surrounded himself with was catching up with him; maybe that bite had infected after all and this was all some fever-dream. Pleading: "You knew, though, didn't you?"

 

COBRA -

 

The beat of his heart; the curve of his ribs as he pushed against his own. Hands squeezing him, somehow needy yet less aggressive than anything he'd ever had in the night tent. Feather touches to his battered neck. Cobra let his eyes slip closed and gave a giddy laugh as SIgvard dragged him down into the soft cushions like some kind of child's toy. He had forgotten how heavy he was; he pushed and squirmed for a moment until he was safely beside the man, not underneath him. He let him stay close, not the sharpest himself, though Sigvard seemed positively delirious for the amount he had taken. Had he prescribed too much? Was it stronger than he remembered? It was hard to recall.    
  
His chest rose and fell in slow, steady swells, idly kicking his feet back and forth if only to feel his skin slide against the silk cover of one of the cushions. Not one to imbibe, having spent too many nights in a drug-addled state to consider doing it recreationally in his own time, he had never appreciated his own bedroom like this. Keening, he arched his back, getting comfortable just as Sigvard began to speak again.

 

_ Ashi _ . Cobra opened his eyes. His first thought was some odd Northern name, but no, their names did not sound like that. They sounded like Sigvard and Kipput and Brandson. Foreign names were different too, all soft and slurred like Julierre. Flinching for a moment, he squirmed, turning his head away even as he reached up to cradle Sigvard's stupid skull. Some kind of waking dream, maybe.    
  
_ Ashi _ . He'd heard words like that, now that he dwelled on it. Mothers cooing it to babes, other spearmen soothing a man with a blood-drenched arm. The definition was not clear to Cobra, but he could get an idea of it, slowly stitching the pieces together with narrowed eyes. A softened brow, lips parted in what he couldn't quite manage as a sneer; couldn't muster up that much spite.    
  
"I don't sing," he murmured, voice husky. Then, a mellow accusation. "You've been spending time with the Southerners." They could have been Urdai, they could been one of the other tribes who dotted the trade route South. Cobra didn't know enough to be able to tell.

"When did it calm you?" he pried further, eyes staying open a fraction as he lay there on the bed. His idly kicking feet slowed to a near standstill, although the room still felt as though it was very gently swaying all around him. "What made you hurt?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

That voice, more steely and masculine than he’d expected, tugged Sigvard gently in the direction of reality. He breathed deeply, turned his lips to kiss at his skin, and moved his calloused fingers up the slave’s chest to nudge at the piercing in his nipple. “Cobra,” he named, idly. Not an answer to the question, although maybe it should've been. More of a landmark among all this haze. He was so heavy, and so unnaturally tired.   
  
The word and the wandering melody that came with it had calmed him on a hundred nights. It'd calmed him when he thought too long about all he’d done in violence, or about how far away he was from everything he knew, or about how he didn’t know the first thing about building a fucking house and maybe any moment it’d come crashing down upon them.   
  
He shook his head. He didn’t have the words to articulate all that, at first, and so he opened his eyes by half and took another breath as if to concentrate. It was no use; it was like slogging through mud. He was heavy, and warm, and tired, and still somehow expecting to hear  _ ashi, ashi _ . What was the question? What had made him hurt? "When I found you."  _ You _ . Some ambiguity, still, in that word. "After being away." The image came to him: Cobra’s body laid out in the cushions, the red rash around the front of his throat. He closed his eyes against the picture. But then there was the rain and the mud and two bodies laid out on the wet earth. He pushed out a complaining noise—he couldn't put an end to it. The scroll, the drawing of the tree, the fierceness with which he wanted to burn it, still. Two faces, bloated and with their lips curled in rot, screaming up at the sky.

Blinking back to life, he let himself breathe. The venom swept him up, like a bit of dust, and had him floating again.   
  
Still fucking heavy, mind, as he pushed himself to an elbow, to a palm on the other side of the slave's body, so that he could bring his lips with  _ purpose _ to Cobra's own. He wouldn't stop loving him. Pigheaded thing. Even with all the ugliness of the day, he couldn't manage to fully shake his affection for the creature beneath him, all made of contradictions. Strong, and weak, and kind, and vicious. He delighted him. It showed: His fingers tangled gently into his hair, and he nursed the kiss slow and soft and chaste. When he rocked his forehead against Cobra's, he made some merciful effort to keep his full weight off him.   
  
"I had a boy," he offered, by way of explanation. "By a southern girl. She would sing." His nose burrowed against the man's cheek, and then he kissed there, too. And over his eye, and the middle of his brow. "I won't leave you and you won't leave me, hm?"

 

COBRA -

 

The little deity felt better when the man addressed him directly, no longer talking to some illusion of his sleeper venom trip. Something about the idea of being invisible grated on him; for all the times he'd hated being in the spotlight, he hated being ignored even more. Cobra could be as harsh on himself as he was on others; he did not enjoy being alone. Being surrounded by luxury took the edge off, but even then it his solitude took its toll once Hamad began to neglect him.    
  
_ You _ . An itchy tone to it, that word. Grimacing, he squirmed, kept from moving away by Sigvard's meaty arm. He looked up at the blond with a flash of uncertainty, not able to be nimble in his current state, anyway, and made a faint noise of relenting as his mouth was taken in a kiss. It was attention, he supposed, even if he was plagued by a creeping feeling that culminated in just four words.

A boy. A son, he meant. "Oh." The sound came out, blurted before he could groom the tone to something less perturbed. For all Sigvard's talk of enjoying women just as much as men, he had assumed... what, exactly? Some obsession with tits? That he would be smart enough to take a woman's ass instead of her cunt? Of course he wasn't. The ramifications of pregnancy and childbirth made his softened mind spin, agitated further by the absence of these people  _ now _ . In Cobra's mind, there could be only one reason, for the desert was perilous and desertion was unthinkable.    
  
"How did they die?"

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard was halfway down a line of thinking that had him somewhere far-off, some ridiculous imagining of him and the slave up in the mountains huddled up by a roaring fire. It seemed to amuse him to think of it—Cobra all swaddled in sheepskins. Even that question didn't knock the grin from his kissing lips. It did, however, knock him onto his back among the cushions, and he stretched his body out as far as it would go. Heavy limbs rested where they fell, and his chest and his arms and the rest of him was for Cobra to use as he saw fit.   
  
"I don't know," he answered, trying to put some distance between himself and the mystery. If he got to thinking of it now, he'd go down that same old miserable hole of possibilities: It could have been raiders—not that he had anything to raid, but it could have been a boy proving himself, a misguided thing, or someone worse off than even him. It could have been a madman waiting in the woods. His cousin had once told him it was likely a murder-suicide to escape from Sigvard. He didn't like to think of that one. A hand lifted to wave it off. "I was away, I wasn't there to see it." They were dead some weeks by the time he came back to the homestead. That little face, blackened and picked apart by animals.   
  
He'd drifted off again, and forgotten which way was up. A raising of his head did the trick. But every time he opened his eyes to the quarters, he seemed to be faintly disappointed; he wanted to sink into the heat and the weight of himself and forget where he was again. A long, long, sigh. "Years ago, now," he mumbled. "A different lifetime." Eyes opened to slivers, inspecting Cobra's face. "You understand this, I think."

 

COBRA -

 

So he had left them. Cobra could have spun one of a thousand narratives to explain this; that he had left them to fight a war, to provide for them, because she had sent them away. That she had abused him. Oh yes; as big as the man was, Cobra had witness Sigvard's capacity for emotional injury firsthand. Yet in the pit of him, a seed of suspicion, maybe resent, had already formed and sprouted and swelled.    
  
"You were a coward," he murmured. He didn't push him away when he said it; didn't even really sound disgusted. He knew it would hurt the man regardless of the tone, but in the same heartbeat he knew that it was not his place to coddle and soothe with lies and half-truths. That wasn't behaviour fitting of a god, after all.

"I do understand," he sighed, letting his feet fall still on the bed. The venom kept him calm and melancholy. Imagined visions of death and starvation, the faces of the victims kept generic by unknowing, scrolled slowly through his mind instead of racing in the usual way. The idea to smile occurred to him but his lips would not comply. "It's not like I haven't done terrible things years ago, either. I know what it's like to destroy an old life." Closing his eyes again, he turned, curling his body and pressing his forehead against Sigvard's shoulder.    
  
"Did you burn the bodies?" he asked. "They might haunt you if you didn't." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

_ Coward _ . The word burned like a hot coal somewhere on the middle of his chest, sinking through flesh and muscle and bone. It upset him, predictably, and violently so. He'd been a coward, yes, in a hundred different ways and a thousand different times throughout his too-long, too-short life. He was cowardly still, having fled from his homeland to hide behind the desert, and both of them knew it. But he wasn't a coward for them; not for that boy and his mother who'd sing him to sleep.   
  
He became a little fitful in his hurt. Eyes opening to the ceiling, he tried for protests and ended up with glimpses of noises that got all stuck in his throat. A hand sank into Cobra's hair, gentle, and another sought out a cushion to pull up onto his pale body. Wanting blankets again. Even if it was dead hot. Wanting to hear that lullaby.   
  
"Of course I burned them," he retorted. He'd built them a great and roaring pyre, and ornamented it with his best blade, and whatever precious metals he'd had with him, and her favourite garments, and other fine things—fit for a lord, he'd thought at the time. Nevertheless: "They haunt me regardless." Those vicious dreams. Curled lips, screaming at him.

"Don't call me that again." Fingers knitted into hair, tugging at it, not quite painful or punishing. He wanted to leave, now, but he couldn't, he couldn't leave his side again. " _ 'Coward,' _ don't call me that, not with respect to this thing." He felt as though he was sobering, but that wasn't quite right. The drug was battling the hot coal on his chest in a wicked ebb and flow. "I did as well as I could by them. It wasn't my choice to go. And on finding them, months—it was months before I had any thought but finding their killer, and I only slowed then because I'd gone half-mad and starved." Those first weeks in the bush was a violent oscillation between wanting to live to avenge them and wanting the snow and the wet and the cold to take him. "I did as well as I could by them, and I'll do the same for you."    
  
This was too much, too grounded in harsh reality. He'd relived it often enough that he had every dire thought memorized, a pattern of cuts against his heart. Like a routine. Cobra's milky poison was distracting him less and less. "More," he demanded, gruff. "More of this stuff. It's not working—I won't sleep, like this."

 

COBRA -

 

Like crocodile sensing movement in a pool of water, Cobra could feel the man's anguish and outrage at the accusation. It opened up another set of unseen eyes in him, double-lidded and predatory. He said the word again, not out loud; but in his head. Twisting, pushing back against the hand that threatening to pull his hair but just didn't quite follow through.  _ Coward _ .    
  
"They do," he agreed, a fey look in his blue eyes as he straddled the man's chest, his body weighing heavy as he took a seat. His centre felt solid and slow, but his hands, wrists; nimble and wispy. He picked over the hair at the man's temples like a bird, taking his face in his hands. "You say you had no choice," he cooed. "Why? Why did you leave them?" Black. His eyes felt black. Would they turn black, if he ascended to a god? Bad trip. Get out.   
  
"No," he murmured, lips curving in a smile. "I won't give it to you. Do you hate me yet, Sigvard?" He asked, laughter seeming to echo in and out of focus. "Have I done enough to make you fear the gravity of Urd?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

It was dizzying to look at any one place for too long a time. Sigvard's chest rose and fell under the constraint of the slave's weight in a struggle against the urge to topple over, and he let his eyes go to the makeshift drapes, and the basin, and the cabinet of poisons, and finally to blackness as he closed them. Calming, steadying breaths, then. His hands, which had followed Cobra's thighs, pushed up to hold his hips, and his thumbs stroked gently at the shape of flesh and bone. He wanted to leave, and he couldn't. He couldn't ever leave again.   
  
He shook his head. That wretched dizziness was only amplified. "I do not hate you," he murmured thinly. "I will not." The question of his leaving was forgotten. He didn't want to think on the woman and child anymore; not if he was only going to dwell on their violent ending, and do nothing to recall the delight of them.   
  
"Mercy." A plea to all the little gods, and most of all the one astride him. "Cobra, mercy, please. I only want to sleep." The day had started in the violence of that ginger oil, and gone on with the violence of cutting and biting, and now it was ending in violent memory, too. "You said it would be soft—soft as water." A far cry from all this wretchedness. "You promised it. Please, I need more of the stuff. Mercy."

 

COBRA -

 

Was he a god of death, he wondered? The first Keht had killed hundreds; thousands. The Urdai themselves had slaughtered thousands more over the centuries. They were known to be ruthless with their spears, blood drinkers, especially on the outskirts of the Capital where their beloved True Keht had been taken. The screams, the wailing, the mourning; he could hear it like an ancestral echo is he ever spent too long looking at a flame. He could feel the heat in his blood. Stopped his heart from being cold. Stopped him from killing him, this mewling sap of a man, who he could feed arsenic as easily as feeding a baby.    
  
"You want to sleep," he repeated, hollow. A flicker of a smile twitched on his lips, taking a few deep breaths himself as he curved his spine and leaned in closer, cupping the flesh of the man's cheeks in his hands, lettings fingers slide back around his head, lips brushing up against his ear with cruel teasing. "It will come at a price," he whispered, already smiling. "I am cruel, I know. But what is kindness to something like me? I want your secrets, Sigvard. I want to know why you left. And I will wipe the tears away, I will kiss you and tell you ' _ ashi _ ' and everything that you want, but first," he paused a beat. "I want to know."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard should have known better. The treat his godling was dangling at the end of a stick had already been promised him; if he was allowed now to raise the so-called price, he would only do it again, and again, and the Northlander would never get his meaty hands on what he was owed. And besides all that, Cobra's apparent thrill at being  _ cruel _ should have been enough of a warning.   
  
But he was a stupid man. Made stupider still by the venom.   
  
His eyes opened to slivers and wandered the darkness of the little space between their bodies. His hands moved up to the man's chest, and his massaging fingers brought warmth along with them as they worked into his muscle, down along his ribs one by one, and pushing gratefully into the softness of his stomach. He shook his head again. Swallowed against the spinning. "It isn't a secret." He was hushed, if only to will himself closer to sleep. "It's not some scandalous thing." The whole story was mundane, in his country; homes were raided, women and children were taken or slaughtered. Hell, the girl herself had been a thrall when he'd met her. It was just the way of things. "It's only painful to think of."   
  
The words felt clumsy in his mouth, insufficient in describing it. 'Painful' didn't capture the ache of remembering the last moment he'd spent with them in life.

 

"The house had flooded and slipped with the mud, in the spring," he explained. His fingertips were feather-light on Cobra's skin, tracing aimless designs. It was soothing to remember that he was here, now, underneath this terrifyingly strong and hopelessly weak creature. "I didn't know how to fix it, to shore it up. I needed to find a builder. She was terrified of it collapsing, I think." Even at the end, they barely understood one another. They taught each other the words they needed to, in their respective tongues—eat, child, fire, fuck, and all these urgent things—but had been content to mostly communicate with their bodies. "She wouldn't sleep, and then the boy wouldn't. They were miserable. I had to find a builder."   
  
A deep breath swelled his thick chest, lifting Cobra's body a fraction. "It was a week to town." Intentionally so. "I found him, but there was the matter of paying him. I stole—I didn't have time to collect men for a proper effort—and was caught." He'd stolen and been caught a dozen times, and could have bore it out if only he didn't know who was waiting for his return. "It was some time before I was free." All the air left him. "So there it is. That's why." Mundane. Maybe it was some sort of revenge to disappoint Cobra in how ordinary the story was. "Give me more, now. Give me what I want."

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra wished he could tell the man how his beloved had died. Not too soothe or settle, but to terrify. To coax out the hatred he pursued so doggedly, to prove a point. Yet as easily as he could follow along the story in his mind's eye and draw his own conclusions, he could not see the true end. That wasn't how it worked. The Urdai walked because they looked forward; they may have tread on familiar ground again and again over the years, but they moved forward all the same. No amount of choking was ever going to let Cobra see into the past, especially not a past that was not his.    
  
Suddenly, he was aware of the quiet in the room. If there had been a sound before, he was sure there was, ringing in his ears, he had not properly recognised it. Leaning closer still, he kissed one of the man's closed eyelids. " _ Ashi _ ," he whispered, voice hushed. There was no melody to it; he was not a singer, he had always refused to sing. But it was gentle, and his touch on the man's face turned kind. Slipping his hands down to his shoulders, he pressed down for a moment as he pulled up his legs from under him and  let his body lay atop the man's broad frame, spreading his weight more evenly without such a burden on his breathing. " _ Ashi, ashi _ ," he cooed. Sigvard had been a coward, yes, but not in the way that crawled upon a man's back for years. It had been a simple fear, a noble pursuit. A fool's mistake. He kissed him gently in between the quiet blessings. " _ Ashi _ ." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Maybe, if the drug coursing through his veins wasn't tugging him into some unknowable depth beneath cushions and mattress and stone, Sigvard might have been wary of the slave's sudden tenderness. Maybe. Maybe he would have accepted it regardless, as he did now, letting go of his next breath as if he'd miss it, pinching his brow against the possibility of Cobra's soft lips turning into something sharper. That word. That word was like fingers through his hair, like the crackling of a good fire, like the richness of warm broth.   
  
Pale and clumsy fingertips lifted to touch the corners of the slave's jaw, and he kissed at his lips with a hunger; milking more and more of that word from them. Drifting his hands to the tenderness of his neck, he felt where he imagined bruises to be. Foolish, weak thing. Poor creature. Remembering, too, that his godling had once warned that Sigvard would one day inflict this injury on him—he kept his exploration in the palest of imitations, only curious, only sympathetic.   
  
His breathing was slow, like sleep, but his mind was working. He wanted to say it all over again. Everything he already knew. All those things that made him foolish and dangerous. A faint grunt would serve as a complaint, knowing by now what it would get him if he did. He was heavy, heavy. He couldn't be sure if his hands were still on flesh, or just stroking air. "Today was miserable," he mumbled, all parts of him asleep except for his running mouth. "Let's not have a day like this again. Hm?"

 

COBRA -

 

In time, the cooing words dimmed to a melodic hum, unable to form the words with his lips pressed up against Sig's. Closing his eyes, his body grew heavy against the warmth of the Norhterner's skin, eventually turning his head to the side and nuzzling into the crook of his collar bone. Even as sleep took him, that second, unseen pair of eyes inside his mind did not succumb to slumber. Angular, awake and waiting, they observed the crackling, orange flames that bloomed all around their sleeping bodies. There was no heat to them; only colour and sound.    
  
The twilight from the window grew to shadows, then, swallowed by blackness, another fire appeared in the distance, its golden glow illuminating the face of a figure he had never seen before yet seemed strangely familiar. With his bronzed face and wide lips, there was little doubt he was Urdai, but he was not Urd, and he was the only Urdai that Cobra was capable of recalling by both face and name. Judging by the weathered skin of his bare chest and the hunch of his shoulders, he was old. His head was covered in a blue woad turban but his eyebrows had flecks of gray. When Cobra made eye contact with this mysterious Urdai, it seemed to shock him, sending his eyes wide and his body falling back into the dirt. The sound of a gasp snuffed out the flames and Cobra awoke.

He remained still for a moment, thinking. It was still dark outside, not yet dawn, but his head was much clearer now. The venom must have worn off. Frowning, he shifted, moving his body onto its side and loosely hooking his legs around one of Sigvard's thighs. His foot ached with the movement, pulling a faint grunt out of him.    
  
"We should leave when we're healed," he murmured, knowing the old warrior would be awake by now. "They're waiting in the desert."


	9. Meeting Irfan

SIGVARD -

 

A deep breath and a long, long silence said everything of how Sigvard felt about waking. But he nodded, at last, and hummed a noise of approval. More quiet, then. The whisper of wind through fronds and drapes, and the smell of jasmine blossoms—still open in the night. His mind didn't want to do any work, just yet. They had the whole day ahead of them trapped in these quarters or at least the estate, and he couldn't imagine much to fill it; training would be some hours, but he would tire, and then...?  _ Lessons _ ?   
  
So his mind didn't want to do any work, but it was all the same, and soon his eyes were opening to slivers. They're waiting. But of course they were waiting, because they were without a Keht, no? This would be something else. Something that had come in the night, or in the afternoon before. His voice was hoarse with sleep: "You saw this?" His thick arm came up to curl around the man's head, so that his fingers could tangle up in his hair. "With the venom, or—?" The free hand lifted to wave in the direction of the scroll still on the floor. "Your hands?"

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra's bright blue eyes stared out into the dimly lit room, rarely blinking. "Yes," he answered without missing a beat, eyes darting corner to corner. His breathing was slow and steady but his stillness signalled being alert. "In the dark. Through the fire, I saw it. There's always fire." His hand closed into a gentle fist, pressing in tighter against the warmth of the bigger man's chest.    
  
"I don't know why," he added with a dry swallow. Suddenly firstly, he reluctantly peeled himself away and climbed out of the bed, heading for the water station by the door and drinking in long, greedy gulps. A rivulet of water water ran from the corner of his lips, sliding down to his collarbone with a tickling chill. "Perhaps it was Keht," he reasoned, voice more even now. "Not a True Keht, but whichever one they have right now. An honorary position. Urd said it feels like the tribe is made of ghosts when they don't have a True one."    
  
He was gripping the cup too tightly. Suddenly feeling oddly exposed, he pattered over to the pile of clothes spewing out of his wardrobe and plucked up a bright yellow coverall, twisting the flimsy fabric in the dim light to find the leg holes. They'd been hacked short, making them frayed and skirty instead of the familiar cuff at the ankle or knee. It still felt better than being nude. Still good for the warm night.    
  
"I said cruel things," he recalled faintly. still lingering by his closet as he cast Sigvard with a worried glance. 

 

SIGVARD -

 

The sudden tension in Cobra's body and voice and movements pricked at Sigvard's skin like a too-close fire, and he was soon sitting up among the cushions to watch him flutter around the room. The strangeness of it—of not quite fear, but something close—to see this new anxiety in his godling kept him in quiet awe. He was paying more attention to the slave's fretting lips and fingers than to his words, and by the time he realized those words held some degree of importance, it took some effort to replay them in his memory and pick out the important details.   
  
There was a moment's quiet as he worked it out. Would this ...  _ untrue _ Keht give them trouble? Would he fight for his feeble grasp of the title that was rightly Cobra's? He mulled it over, along with his thick tongue. The Urdai would likely not take kindly to a pale foreigner slaughtering their Keht, he thought, honorary or not.   
  
A sudden shift in conversation had him pinching his brow too gently for the slave to see, so far away. He pulled his own legs up to bend at the knee, and looped his arms 'round them. A cage between his heart, beating quickly now, and the slave who had punished it so severely the day before.   
  
"Yes." His voice was more distant than it should have been, in its guardedness. "After the venom, and before it, too." Those ugly words echoing around the bath. "You're cruel when you're sober and you're cruel when you're not, Cobra, and it's all the same. I can bear it." There was hardly a point in acknowledging it. "Come, come to me." The cage he'd made of his body unfolded. "Let me hold you; tell me why it is you want so badly for me to hate you, little thing."

 

COBRA -

 

His hand seemed to feel both small and large at the same time, switching back and forth between gripping the edge of the dressing partition and clenching in on itself. Likewise, his lips twitched and faltered, not sure if he should grin or grimace. "You're crazy," he said, the words weakened by self-awareness of his deflection as soon as they came out of his lips. Crazy, yes. He'd been called that himself countless times.    
  
"I've killed men for far less," he clarified, looking Sigvard over without venturing closer. DUring the earliest years following his escape, he had been furious and twitchy indeed. With the full weight of his sins still crawling on his back, even to be recognised by anyone was enough to invoke a wrathful assassin in the little performer.    
  
"And yet you tolerate it all." The man's head took on a curious tilt as he ventured a few steps closer, letting his hand fall away from the partition. He hesitated for another brief moment before he finally made contact with the man again, settling in front of him with his arms looped around his neck.    
  
"I do it to rile you," he crooned into the man's ear. "Men are easiest to read when they lose their tempers. They can't be calculating when they're angry." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

This was news to him, that Cobra was generous with killing. It puzzled him, a little, not because he didn't think the man was capable or petty enough to do it, but because it struck him that he himself ought to have been killed several times over by now, having annoyed the slave for days on end. Was this what he meant by Sigvard somehow protecting himself from his dangers? Well. If there was a lesson somewhere in all this to be kinder to the dark thing, he'd miss it.   
  
His arms answered the godling's embrace, curling greedily around his hips and tugging him close. Lips were soft and warm against Cobra's part-naked shoulder, and would be felt grinning at the explanation of his cruelty. "Is that what you're afraid of?" Catching a bit of his flesh in a sharp and harmless nip, he dropped his hands to take hungry fistfuls of the slave's ass. "And when have I schemed against you, hm?" When had he schemed at all? He wasn't in the habit of being  _ calculating _ . Low, rumbling chuckles burrowed up from his broad chest.   
  
Maybe, maybe not. The Northlander shifted his great weight forward, clinging Cobra to his chest—with an awkward grunt, he was pushing himself to stand, hauling the slave up with him. They could use some fresh air, he thought. To put his little master's mind at ease. The curtains and drapes all hung in the way of the balcony were as good as a maze to him, and he didn't manage the trip without yanking two or three down.

"You've been spending too much time with Hamad, I think," he carried on. The night, the wind off the water, was cool against his pale skin. "I'm simple to read." The railing around the terrace was great fat stone; he sat Cobra upon it, and kept himself between his legs. "With you, I think I've been most honest with your cock in me." Hands on either side of the slave's hips, pushing into rough stone, he watched him, picking out the details in his face. "But you ought to keep your tongue sharp, hm? For all your enemies ahead. So you can practice your cruelties on me."

  
  


COBRA -

 

Carried, again, like a babe. On one hand, it was a welcome reprieve from the sharp, tight pain across the arch of his foot when he walked. On the other hand, though, there was the matter of his pride. "It is a risk I always consider," he explained with a frown, letting his head droop against his shoulder for a moment. The spilled curtains earned a sigh from him. For years he had managed in organised chaos without the interference of the servants; just two days of Sigvard's gigantic presence and he would need servants  _ and _ repairmen, no doubt.    
  
The sexual comment earned a scoff from the little deity as he was set down again. "That's just what you think of me," he shook his head. "When a man is angry, when a man is afraid... that's when it is clear how they see the world, not just matters of my own person." He spoke as though he had experience in these matters, or at least seemed to, well enough.    
  
"You should be careful with that challenge," he warned him, staring up into his face with a soft gleam in his eye. "There is not much in your past I could use against you. I know what I  _ could _ say, but I also could not muster passion behind it; I would know those things to be false and empty. But the fucking..." he let out a huff of laughter, eyes sliding away to the ocean's horizon. "The fucking will undo you, Sigvard. You care about it too fiercely. Making you angry would be as easy as fucking a guard and calling out his name instead of yours." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

He wouldn't deny it. He would have made a fool of himself, if he had; for even just the  _ mention _ of the scenario weakened his smile, and preoccupied him with a little stinging fire in his heart. Anger, yes, and jealousy, and all those other ugly things. But: "I would be mostly depressed, I think." As he had been the day before, with all that talk about fucking Urd. He would be furious, and he would be hopelessly unhappy. Because Cobra was everything he had, in this strange place, in the sense that all his faintest hopes were tangled up in the slave's story. The thought of abandonment, failure, of broken promises—these were the things he could hardly stand. And if he didn't please his godling, if he wasn't his favourite pet to fuck, how long until the rest of it unravelled?   
  
"Fear is better, on me," he advised. "Like the feverweed, that mess." Rage had consumed him, then. His hands flexed in the memory of being wrapped tight around Cobra's throat, before coming in gentleness now to his hips. "If you want me angry, you should make me afraid."   
  
Thumbs pushed into thin fabric, finding the angle of bone, the structure of the southerner's pelvis. "And you?" Closing the space between their bodies, he put his lips to the curl Cobra's hair. "What must I do to you, to get all your secrets?"

 

COBRA -

 

“Like I said,” Cobra repeated, “The fucking will undo you.” He looked away, voice hollow, or maybe bitter. The depression that the blond man spoke of might as well have been a stab wound, for it would injure him in just the same way. Dramatic, over something so small, and that was coming from a man who had survived on the merit of dramatics, at times.

“I have never dealt with fear for longer than a few moments,” he admitted with some reluctance. The final moments, when the gleam of steel reflected in their eyes or when they awoke to find the flames already roaring around their beds. Even Sigvard’s little trip into the realm of mild poisons. All fleeting.

“Although, perhaps more of my secrets would make you afraid,” he remarked, unable to keep back an empty laugh. Tilting his head to one side, he let his hands fit into place over the top of Sigvard’s hands, guiding his caress up over the fleshy swell of his hips where they were pushed up from the hard stone beneath them, around the the small of his back. Close enough now to steal a brief kiss, his face took on a hazy smile as he reached up to brush twin locks of hair behind the Northlander’s ears.

“What secrets do you want to know?” He asked. “Which pieces of me are you so afraid are missing?”

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard sucked on his own tongue, considering the question. Fingertips in the groove of Cobra's spine, he followed it up, up—tracing the ridge at the back of his neck, and washing down the angles of his shoulder blades. How lucky for him that he could worship like this. Nothing like leaving offerings at some altar, as he knew some people in the plains did. Unlike them, he could see and feel and answer to his would-be god directly.   
  
"I wonder about the dark spots in your past." His voice was low, and quiet. His eyes held a distant curiosity, but no expectation; he didn't think he'd unravel any secrets here and now on the terrace. "And the threads that hold you to this world, still." Hamad had come to know him, and the southern king, and who else was there in all the years of his life...?   
  
"The way you talk about things you've done—I wonder if you set that fire." The inferno was nothing to him, back then; the tapestry of his own story was so far from Cobra's in time and distance. It wasn't until these last days at Hamad's estate that he'd begun to give it some thought. "Or if it was done by someone close to you." Perhaps all of his fierceness now was owed to someone showing him how it was done. "And the why of it. After all those years, what prompted the need to see it burn."   
  
Statements, all; not questions. He took a long breath of ocean air. Nothing like the sea; acrid and salty, what should have been fresh. "Little curiosities. I mostly wonder what you'll do with me when I'm no longer useful. This brand—" He rocked his head gently to indicate the bite. "I wonder what it means to you."

 

COBRA -

 

He tilted his head to the side as he listened, pausing for a time with a somewhat bemused expression. It was his own fault, really; too vague, too used to dancing around the details. He assumed that the blond man had read between the lines, but his paranoia had given Sigvard too much credit. It should not have been a surprise that the big man needed to be told explicitly that yes, Cobra did start the fire.   
  
"I did," he smiled, the action laced with pain. He avoided eye contact, for now, hiding his gaze behind a thick veil of dark lashes and out-of-focus glances to the   corners of the balcony. "I am not a benevolent god, but I allow many things. I adapted to them, tolerated, even. Yet..." A faint huff of air pushed through his nose, his movements slowing as he dwelled on the memories. The deafening roar and crackle of the flames, consuming in a way that the heat never would be, if there had been any heat at all. It was difficult to recall that aspect, but he remembered the sounds. It occurred to him in that moment, too, that this was the reason he had been so ready to lop off the blond's head for his crimes against his family, should they have been crimes instead of tragedies.

"For a stranger to commit such atrocities against me was somehow lesser, in a way," he murmured with bated breath, closing his hands to fists but refusing to squeeze. "But for a father to do it to his own flesh and blood... that was an abomination that could only be cleansed by fire. He had to die, you see." He met the man's gaze, finally, blue eyes fey and intense.    
  
All Sig's tenderly delivered insecurities earned a twitch of the little contortionist's lip in a way that resembled a sneer. He bared his teeth more fully, then, as if to remind him of the bite. "You think I will kill you too?" he asked. "I am not benevolent but I am not thoughtless either, Sigvard. You will always be  _ useful _ to me. And if by some far stretch of circumstance I come to hate the sight of you, I will simply leave you in the snow after all your enemies have been cut down."

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Broad hands fell to stone again, away from the body that bristled with new hostility. Or repulsion, or whatever it was that made his lips curl. Touch would have felt unnatural regardless. The word,  _ father _ , the story,  _ atrocities _ , hadn't fully registered in his mind; but in his body, yes, in a hammering of his heart that was meant to get him ready for fighting.   
  
"Nevermind my enemies," he dismissed, thinly. "Your father—he was with you at the circus?" Distant curiosity was replaced with an urgent and immediate one. "He permitted those things to be done to you?" Bound to breaking, he remembered. Made to fuck. Sigvard's mind was stumbling, trying to catch up with the disgust and anger that now coursed hot through his veins. Too much to cope with in the calm, cool night. "He did those things?"

 

COBRA -

 

"My father  _ was _ the circus," Cobra scoffed. "Its owner. I spent most of my life thinking my father was some stranger out in the Northlands who had paid coppers to take my mother in the night tent. When he told me otherwise, the world changed for me. He had to die." Acutely aware of his repetition, Cobra's expression became somewhat guarded, shoulder tensing as he played over the moment in his mind. The smell of kerosene.    
  
"I broke a lamp over a trail of kerosene," he explained, suddenly making eye contact with the big man again. "I did it while he was sleeping. There were others who died too, those who helped him, those who earned small freedoms by stepping on the backs of other slaves. They burned, too. They all did."   
  
He placed his hands on his knees, feeling as though he had created a yawning chasm between them. For all Sig's talk of readiness to worship him as a god he still wondered if the man would not cower before him. He could not apologise for his crimes, for he didn't consider them crimes at all. "Are you afraid, Sigvard?" he asked. "Do I frighten you?" 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Afraid? "Certainly not." Brusque, dismissive, harsher than he meant it. His body was grappling with the notion that he couldn't act on this sudden and violent horror; he couldn't throttle the man responsible, being as he was dead and burnt and dozens of days away. He tried to be softer. "No." But he couldn't shake it fully.   
  
He lifted his hands and tensed and released the rage from them, and with a grunt decided there was no better place for them than Cobra's wrists. Tugging them up to loop around his shoulders in silent instruction, he circled his great arms around the creature's waist and held him tight enough that neither of them could afford breath. "No, you don't frighten me, little thing." There was another inch of space after speaking; he closed that, too. His lips turned to the curl of the slave's hair. He couldn't begin to imagine the scene, the fuel, the flames. He wondered, silently, if Cobra was terrified then or if he was resolute.   
  
Either way. "He had to die, as you said. It's good he burned. It's good it was not quick."

 

COBRA -

 

"Why?" The protest came out of his mouth before he had time to think about it, indignant in its own way; hurt. Gritting his teeth, he his face without hesitation, looping his arms around the blond's neck and burying his face into the patch of blond hair behind the other's left ear. Sniffing, he squeezed tighter, trying to will away the waves of old emotions that were washing over him. He shuddered as he recalled more of his hardship, and even an ugly sliver of him wondered if Sigvard had dredged up these painful memories out of spite. Maybe.   
  
"Fire seems to be my answer to everything." he murmured, voice quieter now. "Perhaps that's why I threw myself into poisons. To be different. To avoid becoming this Keht they say I am."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander's grip did not falter. Braced around the slave, he felt every movement and breath and hesitation of the strain in him; and so he made himself a pillar, and rubbed the strength of his hand up and down his back in a way that was meant to be soothing. It was best if he didn't coo. He'd learned that from his boy and his mother—he wasn't any good at cooing.   
  
"Perhaps," he agreed, nodding, although he didn't quite connect the tribe and any special notion of the flames. He was much too fixated on that last thought, the final component in all this, the great unknown. "And why did you...? Why not Keht, instead of this, instead of sitting at Hamad's feet?"

 

COBRA -

 

Inhaling sharply through his nose, Cobra lifted his head just enough to be able to peer out at the ocean's horizon with a deep furrow in his brow. As much as he would have liked to keep clinging to the man, he had to move back a fraction so his lips had room to speak. "I hate them," he said, voice burning with resolve. "The visions. The screaming. Even the choking is better than seeing all the things that happened in the past. I don't want to be a seer."    
  
A shudder ran through him before he met Sig's gaze again. "I wish I could make you see, to understand," he murmured. "But I don't think it works like that. I'm not a god yet. I don't have any magic beyond Keht's burden." Burden, yes; that was how he would describe it. Urd called it a duty. How could he have such a great duty towards a people with whom he shared blood but scarcely knew?   
  
"I've seen the ruined city in the mountains at a time so long ago, it wasn't even ruined. I only knew it by the great stone steps leading to the palace. I've smelled the jasmine. It's enough to make you feel so, so small." Taking a deep breath, he grimaced, wriggling free of the man's embrace and standing on his own two feet once more. He managed to stave off the wince caused by the ached in his foot. If anything, he welcomed it. "I want to hurt," he murmured. "Anything but this feeling of pathetic foreboding." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

To Sigvard's credit, he genuinely gave his all in trying to wrap his head around the full magnitude of Cobra's sight and all its implications. The effort of it was visible in the distant strain on his face—like the slave, he wished it was as simple as just being made to see, as he did, so that no understanding was lost in the clumsiness of words. He had no sense of that great city, nor the feeling of being dwarfed by it in size or in time.   
  
But he was standing. This was, at last, familiar territory: Sig knew the ache for aching, the need for distraction, the severer the better; when fucking couldn't be relied upon to turn his mind empty, at least there was pain. He'd enjoyed it the morning before, himself, with the ginger oil. And so he wouldn't deny his godling of it, or make any sort of fuss; he'd only nod, and move his body so it wasn't so much a cage around the man.   
  
"We'll quit all this talking, then," he mumbled. Without the option of sleep, there were limited alternatives, particularly if they were confined to these quarters or at least the estate before healing.   
  
There were really only two places for his mind to go. So his great thick arm outstretched to close the distance between their bodies, and he caught a bit of Cobra's flesh in a pinch between his thumb and forefinger. "You want to fight, hm?" His grasp tightened painfully before it released, and a smile began to tug at the corners of his lips before his arm fell back to his side. "I can train you up. Make you a fearsome little thing, without your poisons and your fire."

 

COBRA -

 

The suggestion was welcome; yes, he felt like he’d had quite enough of talking for the time being. He smiled at the familiar feeling of Sigvard’s fingers pinching at his skin, letting the yelp come freely from his throat. Turning back to the man, he gave a sly grin as he took hold of his hips.

“I’m supposed to fight with a spear,” he pointed out, grin turning bemused as his eyes ran over the other man’s sheer size. Cobra was strong, yes, but it was a strength used to lift, balance and flip his own body weight, and nothing more. Sigvard outweighed him in spades.

“It doesn’t seem like a fair fight to me, but perhaps you can teach me something.”

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

"A spear is good," Sig nodded. "We could fit you with a staff, hm? So that you'll have one handy, most times." Turning in his place, he inspected the terrace, and found it a generally good place to spar; so he set about moving pots and cushions and things out of the way. "But there will be times you don't, and you should know then how to bring a man down."   
  
Satisfied the balcony was clear enough, he turned again to the southerner and closed the gap. A new delight in his eyes. "And you can use it when I fuck you badly and need correcting." A laugh got in the way of his body's readiness. He was lowering himself with the slightest bend to his knee and curve to his spine, and limbering his muscles with half-hearted stretches. It was apparent he didn't think he'd be exerting himself, much. "Remember this: You want to be always fighting to have me on the ground, and you on your feet." Easier said than done.   
  
Both hands lifted slowly, then, to grasp 'round the back of Cobra's neck. His grip was firm, but stopped there. "I have you like this." As if to drive home the point, he shook him with some small force. "What would you do to be free of me?"

 

COBRA -

 

"They'll have a spear for me," Cobra shrugged, watching Sigvard set about clearing more space on the balcony with a little furrow lingering in his brow. All the Urdai had spears; with such a long history of their people being kidnapped, it was a rare sight to see one unarmed, be they man, woman or child. Something in the back of his mind nagged that Sigvard would not want to hear about the inevitability of meeting up with his kin, though. Or Urd, at least. He should not have teased him so much. He didn't need to know about the fucking, but on the same note, Cobra could not have known that the man would care quite so much about it when he was so pig-headed about almost every other aspect of life.   
  
A half-hearted laugh pushed out of him. "I'm not going to beat you for a bad lay, Sigv--hrm." Turning, he frowned as thick fingers slowly closed around his neck. Not sudden enough to be startling, but it still put him ill at ease. He broke out into a grimace as he was jostled. "... I don't want to do it," he answered with a quick glance at Sigvard's clear, blue eyes. His fingers flexed, face burning with acute self-awareness that the only fighting he knew was that of a cornered dog. Still, though, lest he seem completely useless, he lifted his hands, the hard edges of his thumb nails tracing the curve of the delicate skin below Sigvard's eye. Close enough to make his point without actually scratching. "It's not for sparring." he said seriously. "It's not for you."

 

SIGVARD -

 

In blinding contrast to Cobra's miserable expression, Sigvard's teeth flashed in a broad, broad smile. It wasn't that he was oblivious to the slave's gloominess. It wasn't even that he wanted to gloat. It was a  _ proud _ thing, that grin. "It's a good instinct. Very good." It was necessary that he have confidence, here; he would have to be brave and decisive in training or he would have none of these qualities in a proper fight. It would take time, he knew. But they had days and days of that. "You must be quick and severe in these things, and that would do the trick."   
  
That bend in his knee and that curve in his spine straightened, and he locked his arms to keep the man at full distance. Craning his neck backwards, demonstrating: "But if I move away, hm?" And then the reverse. Curled low, butting his blond head against the slave's chest. "Or close. Your leverage is awkward—I pinch my eyes, I have time to get at you more."   
  
Calloused fingers released his little godling, and lifted instead to tap at the sides of his own neck. "Do it—take me, as I had you." Already, he was overexcited, scarcely able to contain the sparking energy in every nerve. He could while away the whole day with this, and he wasn't even exceptionally  _ good _ . "You can play the aggressor to start, and I'll defend, hm? If it's too unnerving for me to come at you."

 

COBRA -

 

The blond's grin helped to break the tension at least. Cobra relaxed enough to scoff, lowering his hands. "It's not severity I lack," he explained, though he left the statement hanging. The next words, the ever-important 'it's skill', he left unsaid, too proud to say it out loud. The corners of his lips pulled down as the man changed positions.    
  
"A dagger," he answered, still feeling somewhat uncomfortable as he jabbed two fingers and not a blade at the underbelly of Sig's wrist. It wasn't that he felt ill at the thought of doing this to any man, it was the man before him specifically who he didn't quite want to hurt in this way. Tear his heart, certainly, but not maim his body. At least, not worse than a bite. "Cripple the hand. I don't know how to do it without a weapon or dirty tricks, if that's what you're getting at."   
  
He thought it might be. With a heavy sigh and a strong. almost certain suspicion that he was about to be flipped on his arse, he lunged at the man, one foot forwards as he seized the man's throat and began to squeeze with just enough pressure to seem sincere.

 

SIGVARD -

 

A grip 'round his neck made his shoulders curl in an instinct that had by now been baked into him. The bite wound complained a little, and so did he. Still: "Good." Whispered through his strained windpipe, the praise was matched with another little smile.   
  
"You won't—" The hoarse words were meant to be the start of a lesson, but he was quickly realizing he could no longer get away with talking. So, standing firm against the force of Cobra's body, he lifted both hands in the space between his throttling arms. Up, up, and then his forearms tapped gently at the insides of his elbows. A moment to let him realize. And then a firmer pressure against the joint, bowing them outward, not quite completely. When the pressure on his throat necessarily relaxed as the man lost his leverage, he took a breath. "It takes hardly any strength to do this—particularly if you're quick."   
  
In a gentle display, he carried on: Snaking his arms up the length of Cobra's, pushing his elbows out and out and out, it was only a matter of time before he was free of them. "You could do this. Or—" He took his wrists, then, and brought them back to the starting position. Again, hands, forearms, pushing out against the joint. This time, to demonstrate how their bodies came closer. Their faces. His forehead rocked forward, tapping softly against the bridge of the slave's nose. "You could break it. Make him bloody."   
  
Of course, rather than retreat, he lifted his chin to instead catch the slave's lips in his own in a brief kiss. "You want to watch it again, hm? Or do you want to try it?"

 

COBRA -

 

At least he wasn’t thrown on his arse. Cobra watched carefully, somewhat guarded, as Sigvard manipulated his arms and forced him to release the choke hold. It was a different way of thinking, that was for sure; Cobra’s instincts had always been as drastic as possible, panicked. He wasn’t to blame for this, though. Even he knew that.

“I see,” he murmured, inviting the man’s hands to his neck so he could try it for himself. The kiss took him by surprise, making him blink with the distraction of it. Shaking away such thoughts, he tugged the man’s hands closer to his neck instantly, testing the move. Still, though, the taste of him nagged at his mind. Cobra even wondered if it was another trick to distract him. So untrusting; so cynical.

“I wonder,” he murmured, eyeing Sig’s neck. “What would you do if it was legs around your throat instead of hands?” He tilted his head with that same guarded expression again. As bad as the blond was at reading between the lines and hearing the words that were made obvious without being spoken, the slave neglected to explain the likelihood of him employing such a move. Based on past experience alone, he’d used fucking as a means to other men’s demise on more than one occasion. It made them stupid, after all, and the transition from eroticism to asphyxiation was simple.

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Predictably, the context of Cobra’s hypothetical scrap was lost on Sigvard. After visibly giving the idea some consideration, he decided it would be much better to demonstrate; so he lowered himself to the stone floor, and tugged the slave along with him.   
  
“This is part of the aim, remember, to have me on the ground,” he reminded—really, if his godling remembered nothing else, he ought to have remembered that. His chest puffed up against the full weight of the man’s body, and his hands came to his thighs to guide them tightly about his neck. Still affording himself room to breathe, of course. Barely. “But you’re on the ground, too, and there’s my one advantage. You want to be up, away, quickly; to fetch a weapon, or to run. Or else to keep going until you’ve tired me out with the struggle, and in my weakness, come and throttle me.”   
  
Content with their arrangement, he slapped Cobra’s thighs for no other reason than to do it. “I am not weak, yet.” His eyes slid down the slave’s abdomen, but he wasn’t quite able to see past his chin to his prick. So he bowed his head to nudge it, instead. “I would hit you here, if I could. You can’t block it as easily as if you were standing—but it’s awkward for me, too.” His hand came down gently, proving how his own jaw protected the man’s cock and balls, and how he’d have to crane his neck to get a good thwack in.   
  
“I have all this, too.” Feet planted, he lifted his legs and his body off the ground only to let himself fall again, showing the force of his weight in the sudden jostle of their bodies. “And these.” Hands coming up to settle in the junction of his hips and thighs. “So I might turn—“ Curling his shoulders against the ground and keeping his neck stiff, he put every effort into rocking onto his side; just enough that the slave would either have to topple over or come up to his knees. Either way, free of him. Momentarily, at least, until he pulled him back to sit on his chest again.

“You, though, I think, you ought to use your flexibility.” Both arms flat against the ground, next to his body. Again, feet planted; again, lifting himself up. Even with his limited agility, he could bring one leg up and hook his ankle and foot around Cobra’s neck. A gentle tug, then, to show him how easy it might be to knock his attacker off-balance. “Like this, hm?”   
  
The strain of it left him breathless, and he was flat on the ground again with some relief. He was not built for flexibility. “You want to try?”

  
  


COBRA -

 

It seemed a lot to remember; sat on the man's chest with his thighs pressing in around his neck while he watched the display, Cobra was increasingly aware of how slow the demonstration was, how much faster it would be in combat. He did not have much of  a head for fighting games. As a boy he was training, and there were few other children who weren't deterred by the ringleader's warnings to leave him along. He soon scared them off himself with his foul temper. What good was sparring to a circus performer, anyway? Even now he felt stupid.   
  
"I see," he murmured, ducking his head briefly. At least not even a trained soldier like Sigvard was above a good old-fashioned hit in the balls. That made the man feel better about his scrappy, underhanded tendencies. He shook his head at the offer to try, easing his thighs apart to give the man more air. "Even sparring, you might crush me," he pointed out, although the words didn't hold much malice. Tittering at the man's determined show of flexibility, he freed his feet from under his weight and stretched back, enough to plant his forearms on the broad spread of the man's chest (more stomach than shoulder, minding the bite) and flipped his body over. Legs stretched, one straight and the other bent, he let out a soft titter as he balanced. More playing than sparring, now. It occurred to him that Sig may actually like Urd's company if they ever got to sparring, for the Chief of the Urdai had a much greater attention span for combat, though it didn't seem like a very tactful thing to say. Yet he said it anyway.

"You may grow to like Urd, you know," he pointed out, straightening both legs and making the curve of his spine slightly less severe. "He would gladly spar with you. I expect there are things to know about fighting on the sand dunes that a Northlander might not be trained in, too. You could be useful to each other, especially if we are to one day take the Urdai up past the mountain ranges."

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

There was no opportunity for Sigvard to fuss about the slave getting distracted from training; for the artful display of that body perched on his chest made the Northlander quickly and thoroughly forget what they were doing. Along with the rest of the known world, for that matter. It was marvelous, and so he marvelled—so close, so deliberate, so beautiful. He'd been so far from it, as a boy. Looking through feet. His hands, opened to cool stone, curled softly now in useless fists.   
  
That name, or un-name, tugged him a little away from his quiet reverie. Enough that his eyes found Cobra's, and watched them a little in silence. But his preoccupation was clear in the faint shaking of his head, and his soft voice that couldn't quite manage to be fully offended. "I haven't made up my mind to dislike him. I'll meet him, first." His eyes flicked to the deep blue of the sky, and the soft glow where the sun signalled its near arrival. "He's only at a disadvantage, by virtue of insisting on subjecting you to that ludicrous tradition. But I don't hate him yet."   
  
Pale fingers lifted to his own head, raking his long blond hair into a neat arrangement that would be lost the moment he stood. "Do you want me to love him? Would it unsettle you if I didn't?"

 

COBRA -

 

He slowly tightened the arch of his back, knees bending so pointed toes could ghost along Sigvard’s shoulders before the soles of his feet gently planted on his chest. With his throat arched taut, making part of the spiral drawn by his body, Cobra’s voice was quieter but it still carried the same emotion. “Love may be a strong word,” he murmured, taking a moment to rest in his pose. “The Urdai are a severe people. I don’t think even I could love Urd, close as we are. But tolerate, yes; I expect you to.”(edited)

With a sigh, he lifted his feet a fraction, bending the knees more to tuck his shins on either side of his forearms. The weight of his body above him pushed his head down a fraction, chin touching the man’s belly. It was more difficult to speak now, twisted up like some kind of parcel. Even his breath was shallow, stretched stomach glittering with each smattering of breaths. Cobra had to@clear his throat before speaking.

“You should not worry so much about the choke,” he reminded him. “I have been through worse. Unless,” he teased, managing a smirk, “it is just the notion of someone else’s hands on me, hmm?”

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

He was not surprised that the slave carried on goading him. Cobra had made it clear that he found weakness in the Northlander's jealousy, and that he was either  _ tireless _ in his effort to root it out, or otherwise simply enjoyed the fun of putting him into a state of agony. Unsurprisingly, the tease made him set his jaw. It was fittingly cruel that in these last days of having his godling entirely to himself, he would be constantly reminded of its ending. But he wasn't surprised, no. Just pained, and a little disappointed.   
  
Hardly  _ helpless _ , though, was he?   
  
Sigvard's arms fell with a gentle slap to the ground, elbows braced, palms open, so that he could push himself upright and cast the slave tumbling gracelessly off his body. All the vengeful things he wished to say manifested in a grunt, which he thought would do. So he was standing soon after, heading towards the door of Cobra's quarters—hunting breakfast, or a slave to fetch it. Tossing that damned scroll in the empty hearth, while he was at it.

 

COBRA -

 

He had expected to end up flat on his arse at some point during their game, but not like this. With a yelp of surprise he quickly uncoiled himself, tumbling onto the ground in a tangle of lips. Teeth closed on the inside of his cheek and the side of his tongue as his chin knocked against the stone tiles, setting the mood for the rest of the afternoon, it seemed. Grimacing, he slowly uprighted himself only to see the huge man retreating indoors. That was the act that was most irritating; his stubbornness, his self-pity. Cobra preferred it when he was angry. Perhaps if he'd been successful in getting the blond to hate him, he'd be more tolerable.   
  
"Fine," he announced his presence coldly once he'd followed Sig back into his room, brushing past him with as much venom as one could muster in the action. "If you wish to wallow, I will find someone  _ else _ to play with. Perhaps I will visit Hamad. No," he corrected himself suddenly. His eyes grew sly as he grinned towards the door, recalling a memory that suited him better than satisfying his  former (well, faux-former) master. "The guard Irfan." Snickering, he made for the door, grabbing a fistful of vials as he went. 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Mock fighting had made him limber. Even blinded by the sudden heat of rage and deafened by the course of blood through his ears, he could place Cobra's body in the room. His arm snapped out as the man passed him—his fist came down to whip at the back of his wrist in a strike that would bruise down to the bone, and now sent vials falling to shatter over stone.   
  
"You will not!" His barking voice was far too loud for the room, coming back at his ears in echoes that were sharp and painful. "You couldn't be left for an afternoon; I won't leave you now, you wretched thing, you're stuck with me." He was heaving. He was helpless; he came to understand he was helpless, and that only served to whip his frenzy up more and more. "You have me angry." A seething, bitter accusation. "And then what, what comes next? You alienate me, cunt!" There was a tension in his muscles that he couldn't be rid of without hitting something; so he slapped his own bite, fiercely. "This will come to mean nothing to me."   
  


 

COBRA -

 

He had grown accustomed to Sigvard coddling him, allowing him to trample him in any sense of the word without protest. He wasn't sure which poisons exactly he had grabbed, that was part of the fun of it, you see, but he still let out an indignant cry at the loss, snatching his bare feet back from the broken glass and mixing puddle. "Then don't ignore me!" he roared, rounding on the bigger man as though they were matched in size.   
  
It was the irreverence towards the bite that had the little deity seeing red. The insult of it. The audacity. Snarling, he launched himself at the man, grabbing his shoulders and digging in heels into the meat at the man's side to keep a grip on him, ferocious and wild. His teeth found the man's cheek quite easily but biting was another matter; the surface was so broad and smooth that his teeth slid across the flesh and snapped together, leaving little more than an angry, red welt in their wake. Screaming in frustration, he knocked his head against the man's cheek bone, grip turning to one where his fingernails dug into the skin enough to draw blood in little crescent moons.

 

SIGVARD -

 

Knocked off-balance by the force of the body against his, Sigvard's hands were back and away, waiting to brace him against the stone floor—but he stumbled and staggered and managed to keep standing, even with the vicious fucking thing digging into him like nettles.   
  
Breaths came fast and hissing, laced through with grunting complaints. One giant hand was in Cobra's hair immediately; he collected the dark curls at the back of his neck in a tight fist, and then loose, and then  _ tight _ again to ensure his grip was as secure and excruciating as he could manage in the fleeting moment. With the man scruffed like some wild cat, he was able at least to yank his gnashing fucking teeth away from his face. His other hand didn't grapple, at first—it balled up like the other, and rocketed into the square of Cobra's back to punch the air from him and hopefully leave him winded. Drawing off, then. Just as quickly coming down with all his strength into the unprotected side of the slave's lower back. He'd been hit there himself, often enough. He too-intimately knew the screaming fire that would erupt in the organ there, and how shooting pain would burn indescribable through the rest of that fierce little body.   
  
It was only moments; seconds, and then he was falling to his knees, using his weight to push the man into the ground. Scruffing him still, and using the other hand to try and pry his fingers from the meat of his shoulder.

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra grimaced as his head was pulled back by a vice-like grip, teeth gnashing at the air before they clenched with the effort of beating his fist against the bandaged bite wound he'd so carefully swabbed with alcohol just hours earlier. The blow to his kidney put a stop to that, the pain screaming through him in a way that did not translate to sound, only anguish twisting his features. Tears welled in his eyes as he struggled to get free of the brute, to put distance between them as he was unable to shield himself and too weak to do as much damage as Sig could do to him. He was stupid, he saw that now in the blink of a bloodshot eye; he should have run to Irfan or even Hamad. Urd.    
  
With an angry sob he kicked with his feet, gladly letting the man pry his hands away from his shoulder because he wanted his whole  _ body _ to be  _ away _ . grunting with effort as he clawed at the paw in his hair, twisting and scrambling towards the door. There were knives in the room, and poisons galore, but he wasn't that stupid. He'd be disarmed or forced to take his own medicine in moments. No; he needed the door, flinching as the tight skin in the arch of his foot ached with his efforts and the angry throbbing from Sigvard's blows. He could run, though. He was sure he could.

 

SIGVARD -

 

The body underneath Sigvard's was working in desperation to be free of him—and all he knew, then, was that he couldn't allow it. No, no, running wouldn't do. This encounter would end on the Northlander's terms, precisely because every other one  _ hadn't _ .   
  
Knowing full well he couldn't let the little thing go or else he'd never catch him again, he went manic in the effort of keeping hold of him. He had to surrender his hair in the pain of those clawing hands, but he was just as quick to snatch one around the wrist. When it wriggled out of his meaty grasp, he tugged at his clothes. They tore, of course. There was a moment of panic when he was on the ground watching Cobra scrabble to his feet; he pushed his full weight up and forward to careen into him and tackle him face-down in his last great effort to keep him. Snatching his ankle, moving up the length of his body, pushing his weight down into his hips, his spine, and finally a firm grasp around the back of his neck. His hand like an iron collar, fixing him to the floor. His fingers matching, in reverse, the bruises that the slave had delivered himself the prior afternoon.   
  
At first, he sat in the middle of his back—knees grinding into stone on either side of him—with no intention of giving him room for breath. There was only seconds, like this. And then he was lifting himself a ways, using his free hand to capture one of Cobra's arms and pin it neatly to his back. "Enough!" Hoarse, breathless. "Be still!"

 

COBRA -

 

His heart plummeted in his chest as his wrist was seized. Pull as he might, he was strong enough to get away and he could only struggle and curse as Sigvard gained more and more ground. His eyes bulged with panic as the heavy weight pushed the air out of his lungs, the dreadful feeling of  _ seeing _ coming as a warning twinge before he was mercifully allowed a gulp of air.

Gasping, he tried not to snivel as he twisted his head and threw the man the filthiest look he could manage in his wretched position. “What is it that you want?” He spat, eyes full of loathing. “A lie? For me to pretend to be some normal, simpering slave? That Urd will never come, and we will never see the blood of the king?” Grunting, he gave another grave of his body, more for a show of defiance than anything else.

 

“Go fuck yourself,” he groused. “I’ve seen things you can’t even imagine, Sigvard. I won’t pretend for you.”

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander's broad chest heaved in the new calm of the room, and out of the view of the slave—even as madly as he contorted himself—he shook his head. His lungs were too busy with the effort of breathing to summon words. As an unhappy result, he was made to listen to the man's  _ insufferable _ ramblings. Madness, all of it. He couldn't even trace the thought to its beginnings.   
  
He didn't move from his place. "Ridiculous. I haven't asked you to pretend." His voice was ragged. He was exhausted already, and the sun was only just now rising. It had the effect of draining his rage from him, at least. "I haven't said any such thing."   
  
A little more weight to pin him down meant he could flex some of the ache out of his fingertips. "And you? You say you want me to hate you, you say you want me angry, but here is my hate and my anger and all you do is snarl and do violence to me. You  _ torment _ me for my love, and when I am quiet in the face of it, you punish me for it, and when I am not, you punish me for that, too. I think you want a mindless whore in me after all, hm? Or are you trying to drive me as mad as you? Or what is it? What are you trying to make of me?"

  
  


COBRA -

 

"Some things are said unspoken," Cobra said bitterly, eyes narrowing to slits. He could feel his belly pulse against the stone tiles in time with his shallow breathing, and finally his body grew still but still seething.    
  
"I assumed you would practice hate in the same way as me, not like some rampaging beast!" he growled, baring his teeth. A single tear leaked from his exposed eye, making him almost as angry at himself as he was the brute on top of him. "You begged me to punish you just days ago," he reminded the man, face growing terse. "So perhaps you are just as indecisive as me. You are certainly pig-headed, in any case. I want a man who will  _ understand _ that I am in pain, not one who tells me to stop speaking and ignore that which cannot be ignored!"

 

SIGVARD -

 

"And why should I want to want to understand?" Sigvard's grips tightened, and he made use of them to jostle the body below him. A beast, yes; so be it. He saw it as his only winning ground. "Hm? You want me to hate you, but you want me to understand, to listen—which is it? Why should I want to understand you when you're making every effort to be detestable?"

  
  


COBRA -

 

The eyes were opening again. He could feel it, just as a man could feel infection setting into a wound or a sickness taking hold. He closed his eyes, the words painful to get out. "You said you loved me," he murmured, voice wavering. "What is it that you love, Sigvard? Do you wish to truly know and love me, or are you just like the men in the night tent, only concerned with my body?"

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Those words, that voice, had his stomach wrenching in fresh anger. Lies, lies. It was manipulation—it was pity-seeking, and only the gods knew why. Maybe he was comfortable in the illusion that he was alone. Sigvard didn’t know, and wouldn’t stand for it.   
  
“You know I love you,” he hissed, “you know this, you cannot pretend to me you don’t.” He was thinking of the balcony—holding him, out there, as he told him about his father, as he wept. Was that all supposed to be in pursuance of his  _ body _ , in Cobra’s ridiculous story? “I’ve given myself to you! I could have a body like yours with a copper, and I gave you my  _ life _ , you foolish creature. I’ve proved my love again and again and each time you punish me for it, you reject it, you act like it scalds you.” At last, his hands removed themselves from the slave’s limp form. “So there it is, you got your aim.” Lifting himself up and away to crash-land on his ass on the stone. “I love you, but I am desperate not to. I’ll follow you and I’ll be miserable. And you ask for understanding! You’ve given me no reason. Why, again, why should I want to, when all it earns me is your disdain?”

 

COBRA -

 

“Can’t I?” Cobra made eye contact as best he could his head pinned to the side, eyes wide enough to show the whites in a glare. “You have an odd way of showing it. Pain through passion is something I can tolerate, but this just hurts.” The kidney punch, he could have done without. It reminded him too much of the place where he had grown.

The eyes inside him were open but heavy losses, their gaze unrelenting and able to peer through the fog of his lament effortlessly. The words that came next had a dreamlike quality to them; guided. “Men cannot be blamed for fearing the divine,” he murmured, closing his eyes. Without the weight of the Northlander upon him, he breathed easier but stayed in the same place for the time being, resting. “To be all-knowing is to be alone. We know that. But for a soldier to refuse to even try.” He left the words hanging with a grimace, getting to his feet and limping toward his cabinet.

For all his familiarity with it, now he found himself unable to find what he desired, which was a pain reliever that would not bring delirium with it. Scanning the same row over and over, he gave up with a a sorrowful sigh. “I understand now, why it told me ‘coward’.” He said.

 

SIGVARD -

 

“I  _ am _ trying!” More desperation than anger, now, making him shout. It was as if Cobra was speaking in tongues; he couldn’t grasp the meaning of the words, and felt very suddenly surrounded by madness.  _ Coward _ , though. He didn’t need to grasp any heavenly meaning to understand that. It ripped him from his place in time and put him back on those cushions, heavy with venom, unraveling his greatest anguish for his godling to see.   
  
He was grief-struck and panicked. He wanted to leave this place, only he couldn’t, and not because he’d made the covenant—fuck the covenant—but because he was horrified at what he might come back to. “You won’t answer me,” he said, mournful. “Answer me, give it straight.” But the words were empty. An answer couldn’t give him relief, now; it would be as good as lies. The venom is what he needed. Double the dose, or more.   
  
The shattered vials were the answer. To play with Irfan, he said; so the puddles would either be oils or delightful. It was milky, the venom, wasn’t it? Like that smear of whitish stuff on the stone, there, not feet away.   
  
One motion to get on his knees, another to let his height fall so that his palm was grinding into the stuff. And bits of glass, too, so that blood mixed with it; but nevermind, that was good, that would make it go fast and severe, as he understood it. He thought, then, that he ought to try other puddles too, and mashed at them fiercely. So he lifted his hand, glass and all, and collected  _ more _ of everything with a swipe of his fat tongue over his palm.

 

COBRA -

 

"Have you asked what I have seen?" Cobra shot coldly over his shoulder, hands balling to fists upon the cabinet tabletop. "Have you paid attention when I am speaking? To try is to thrust yourself face-first into the terror, not will it away." He glanced down at the floor, wondering if the milk of the poppy was mixed into the mess that had been smacked out of his hand, when Sigvard's meaty paw suddenly barged into view. He only put together what the man was doing when it was too late.   
  
"No!" he cried, watching in horror as the blond blindly introduced a cocktail of... of what, exactly? "Stop you, you idiot!" he cried, darting forward and knocking the man's hand just as he had knocked his, sending a splatter of fluid to the floor. He couldn't doo much about the substance already spread across his tongue and worming its way into his bloodstream, fragments of glass and all. "For all your talk of infection!" He scolded the man angrily, slapping him across the face out of frustration before he crouched next to the mess with the grimace, hastily picking through the shattered remains to find the vial caps.

Milk of the poppy. Not harmful, but not an antidote, either. Essence of lover's leaf. It would have been good for Irfan, not so much for now with Sigvard stuck with so much glass. And for the final vial... peyote juice. Cobra set the pieces down with a sigh. "You won't die," he announced, casting the man with a moody glare. "But you will see colours. It's good you haven't eaten. Sit down." He did grab a dagger, now, but he intended to use the fine point tip to dig out glass, not cause more trouble.    
  
"Such a stupid thing to do," he muttered under his breath, pulling an old bowl that still held an empty grape stem toward him. The glass made quiet sounds as he flicked it into the terracotta. "You are forbidden to die, Sigvard. Know that."

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

There was some relief, finally. Sigvard had got his aim, in dosing himself with that mysterious soup, and now there was only the matter of waiting. So he didn't protest when his hand was knocked away. He didn't balk at the open palm whipping across his face. He sat, quiet and obedient, in the manner of a toddler who didn't fully understand what he'd done wrong.   
  
"I don't intend to die," he murmured. It hadn't occurred to him that any of the stuff might be poison; although by now he should have known that he wouldn't be the only one treated to the slave's sadistic experiments.   
  
As the tip of the knife bit into his skin, the fingers of the other hand wandered back to the puddle nearby—the damage was done, and he didn't see the harm in a few more drops, and anyway, he didn't have anything else to do with himself while he was being tended to. Of course there was a sharp correction, and his hand was retreating to his lap instead. He picked at his own feet.   
  
"I cannot be this thing you want from me, I think." He was watching the ground, or some area beyond it. "If you want for me to hate you, I will hate you. If you are cruel and tormenting I will hate you; all my love for you will vanish. I cannot hate you as violently as you wish me to and love you, still. I can't manage it. I don't understand it." It wasn't at all straightforward, and his desperation to think of it in the way his godling did—to try, at least—had his guts all twisted in helpless agony. "Make it simple for me, please, my love. Which is it, which do you want?"

 

COBRA -

 

"You don't act like it," Cobra scoffed quietly, sobered by the act of picking glass out of the man's wounds. OF all the things for him to do, he hadn't expected him to be so reckless like this. Had he been some kind of Northland beserker, in his army days? It wasn't out of the question.    
  
"I didn't even know what the vials were myself, when I grabbed them," he clarified, words punctuated by more glass shards flicking into the bowl beneath them. "You could have died today. You must think more carefully, Sigvard." The word came with a heavy sigh, for the slave was acutely aware that he needed to take his own advice, also. Shifting uncomfortably where he sat, he finished up the work of seeing to the blond's hand and set the dagger aside.   
  
"I don't want you to hate me," he admitted, albeit with reluctance. Not because it wasn't true but because it was difficult to admit his own shortcomings, especially after such a violent crescendo. "I  _ fear _ that you will hate me. That is why I ask so often. How could you  _ not _ hate me? As a seer, anyone would, so I give them less terrifying reasons to dislike me. There are time when I would like to burn it all to the ground, but that would just make me even more like Keht." He gave a sad smile as he joined Sig in sitting on the bed. "It's inescapable."

 

SIGVARD -

 

There was the scrape of dagger on stone, and Sigvard was free to inspect his hand. Nothing to worry himself over, he thought—although between this and the gash from Hamad's blood pact, it would be some nuisance to wield a weapon. He grunted at the idea. Leaning over the bowl, he swished his tongue and cheeks to summon up the little flecks that had cut up the flesh inside of his mouth, and spat them out in a gob of saliva and blood. His gums would be dark, his teeth stained. Remembering how, back home, he would chew berries and roots and other things before combat to achieve the same effect; a mouth all dyed an unnatural blue or red or black served to intimidate. It was a shame he had nobody to scare, here.   
  
His eyes peeled to follow the movements of Cobra's body, and he found he was fighting to listen. There was a slight sluggishness working its way into him, a lovely cushion between him and all things. He meant to dismiss him right away, to tell him he was foolish for fearing such a thing, but he seemed to distract himself with the job of carefully smearing his seeping hand on his own pant leg.

"You speak of..." Voice quiet and fading to nothing when that body came near. He saw where he'd torn his garment. He saw the brilliance of the thin fabric, bathed in the dawn's light that spilled from the balcony through the space in the makeshift curtains where he'd torn some down. Sunrise was seeming, almost, to set the room afire. And with all this talk of burning it all to the ground. "You hide your fear well." He'd started his earlier thought, again, at last. "You speak of these things—Keht, Urd, your people—you speak like you understand it all, and your place in it." Envy wrenched at his heart, until in the next moment he remembered. "But you are afraid. It's hard to see it, the way you talk, even when you're weeping. I've not seen a great deal of your fear, I think."   
  
His gaze fell to the cushions, to get a better idea of the arrangement of their bodies and how to close the gap. A breath was knocked from him when he realized each pillow was somehow coming alive, emanating a light that wasn't quite a light, all the dozen patterns dancing in the corners of his eyes. " _ Gods, _ " he breathed, in inward astonishment. He felt strange about trampling them, and so rather than move himself, he reached out to haul Cobra into his lap.   
  
"I see, now. It's as you said, before, about the cutting." His arms constricted about the slave's waist, to press as much of his own naked chest against him as he could manage. "I can't do anything to save you from your fear, hm? But I can be here to help you bear it. "

  
  


COBRA -

 

"It is not difficult to understand the Urdai people. They were here before anyone else. They walk the land. There is always an Urd and there is always a Keht, and any who would take them as slaves are cursed. Even their traditions..." Cobra gave a hollow laugh. "There is some point to them, I suppose. Urd told me as much as I would listen to."   
  
He didn't know why he bothered talking; by now the drugs would be worming their way deeper and deeper into the Northlander's veins, sped up by the fact that they were taken (mostly) through direct contact with the blood rather than being swallowed. It was impressive that Sig managed to keep his wits about him long enough to make such a poignant statement, and Cobra found himself giving a thin smile even as he felt a sinking feeling in his stomach.   
  
"I used up most of my fear a long time ago," he explained gently, settling into the groove of the blond's lap as he was pulled close. AT the back of his mind it nagged that the wound wasn't bandaged, that blood was getting on his clothes, but it didn't matter, really. Hamad would not even need to buy replacements, such was the bounty of fabric in the closet. Ghosts of slaves before him.(edited)

"Yes," he murmured softly, pressing his lips to the man's forehead to feel his breath tickle at his throat. "That is what I want. I want you to be someone I can trust, Sigvard." A gentle laugh escaped his throat as he looked down at the man, touching his cheek. "Can you even understand words right now? You took a lot of the drug."

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

After a moment, Sigvard nodded firmly. The problem wasn't understanding words. He was gradually beginning to understand  _ all things _ —he was gaining a sense of the individual agencies of the dancing cushions and the drapes and particularly the jasmine blooms as they hid themselves away from the daylight flooding the quarters. Words were simple and grounding, and he found himself wanting to be grounded. So Cobra's voice cut through to him like crystal. Like there was no air between them; like he was in his mind.   
  
"What does trust mean?" Not the word itself, he knew the word, he could understand words. He was just having more and more trouble drawing earthly conclusions, that was all; and it didn't help that he'd had considerable difficulty with the task even before the drug. His lips moved. He didn't know if he was putting voice to any of this.   
  
It was humbling. The heat of the great sun coming against his naked back in a warm embrace. He was immediately torn up by an oscillation in his thinking about his clothes: At first a sense of mourning, imagining that he was exploiting his garments by wearing them; and then pure and blissful  _ gratitude _ in the sudden epiphany that they were serving their divine purpose. Wasn't there hope for him, then? To serve Cobra. But that sun, that sun. He wanted to feel it bake the rest of them.   
  
"I want to be out there," he announced, rolling onto his side with the slave in tow—gravity and the cushions would keep them together, he thought, so he could free up his embrace. Thumbs hooked into the belt around his waist, forgetting all about unwinding it, instead digging marks into his skin as he pulled it past his thick hips and ass and thighs. Fully naked, he was standing. The tenderness with which he avoided stepping on those cushions was unlike anything seen in him. "I want to lie down." Out there, on the terrace. He wanted to feel the solidity of the floor underneath every muscle and bone, and stare up at the sun.

 

COBRA -

 

The drugs had certainly taken hold. Finding himself released, Cobra could only sit back and watch in amazement as the man navigated the bedroom with a mix of madness and newborn calf. As if he no longer understood the function of things. The bulk of what he had taken must have been the peyote; it tastes foul but provided quite the trip. Cobra had only taken it once before himself but he didn’t care for the lack of alertness it produced in him. Watching the man make for the balcony, he turned first and made for the door. It was with great reluctance that he decided to summon a servant to clean up the mess; the combined chaos of the glass, the spill, empty plates and torn clothes was too irksome to ignore. When he opened the door, he jumped at the sight of golden eyes staring at him.

“You called for me,” Irfan said evenly, his face a typical guard’s mask. Cobra narrowed his eyes at the golden hue in Irfan’s gaze. He was Capital-born, not that it was fair to hold that against him.

“Not now,” he groused, crossing his arms defensively as he glanced back at the mess. “Get a servant to clean this,” he said hurriedly, already making for the balcony. He flinched as his wrist was caught.

“The Northlander has lost his wits,” the guard pointed out. “Stay with me. I’ll keep you entertained.”

Cobra’s expression darkened in direct juxtaposition to the bright grin that spread across the guard’s dusky lips. “Fetch me some grapes and I’ll think about it,” he said coldly, his tone implying anything but. Still, an order was an order, and Irfan left for the kitchens. The sun was warm on his skin when he joined the wide-eyed blond on the balcony.

“You cause me trouble, sometimes,” he said snidely as he lay out next to him, although he doubted the man would pick up the words. Turning on his side, he hooked a leg over the man’s thigh, stroking idle lines down his broad chest. “Touch me, Sigvard,” he cooed. “It hurts where I was hit. Make it better.”

 

SIGVARD -

 

The wind over the water was indistinguishable from a breeze through leaves; his blunt fingers lifted to part the drapes, and with the sound crashing up against the estate, he had the thought that it was very much like a canopy of treetops. He felt enormous. And still the sun cradled him like a baby and kissed him everywhere, all down his arms and legs. He cooed, dropping to his hands and knees. Letting warmth touch the back of his head, and his ass, and among his cock and balls.   
  
He was on his back, then. The stone was still cool from nighttime, and so he spread himself fully out upon it. Above him, the sky was blue, but 'blue' wasn't right: There should have been another word for this, because this was bluer than anything he'd ever seen—like the cushions, lit from somewhere inside. Only there couldn't have been an inside to it at all, being as it was the fucking sky. An outside to it? As if they were all in a womb, and there was the wall of it, soaring above them.   
  
His breathing was coming harder and harder as he searched the endless expanse. No panic, no strain. He just felt as though he was operating on the rhythm of the world around him. He was so large, after all. He wanted to make himself a place for littler things. Badgers could nest in the shadows of his hands, maybe, and boys and girls could weave hammocks out of his hair. He was thinking nonsense. He knew he was thinking nonsense, and it made him giggle distantly.   
  
Words of violence,  _ hurt _ ,  _ hit _ , invaded that happy space. The long strokes down his chest had steadied his breathing, and put goosebumps over every inch of him.

He turned his dense head to Cobra's in a wandering slowness. Distracted more than once by a nearby flag, cracking and flashing in the wind. Pain was nothing to the Northlander, of course; the milk of the poppy had dulled the irritation in his hands and shoulder and the hardening bruise under his cheekbone where the slave had crashed his head into him. He nodded. A broad smile came to his lips, flashing teeth and bloodied gums. With all things in the universe being one, he felt as though touching were exactly the answer. He could simply touch him and share the easy comfort that was coursing through his veins. He could be the great healer.   
  
So he was on his side too, then, twining their legs. They belonged like this. Connected. His arm curling over Cobra's body, his hand open against his back, following the length of his spine as if he'd forgotten everything about human anatomy. He came to that sore spot, where his fist had come down before and made hell, and traced it with only the ghost of a touch. When he opened his palm flat against it and felt the slave flinch, he cooed at him. And then he was riding his ribs up again, to come firm at the back of his neck. To hold him still, as he found his lips with his own and nursed at them, slow and chaste and fruitless.

 

COBRA -

 

The touches made him sigh and melt, scooped up by the larger man as easily as a child would scoop up a doll. But oh, how he envied him, for he experienced the world so easily in that moment of drug-addled bliss while Cobra was left to experience the world exactly as it was. Harsh. Sore. Impossibly unfair. There wasn't even any milk of the poppy left to take his mind off things, and with Irfan's comments earlier he didn't care to sample any other substances to take his mind off things. Better to keep his wits about him.   
  
He hated him, in that moment. It was plain now that he experienced the emotion in a different way to Sigvard. Perhaps his threshold was lower, or his definition was not the same. Whatever it was, the kiss amplified it, bloody but slow and maddeningly chaste in a way that felt wrong compared to the ways he'd been used before. And wasn't that just the most terrible thought? Used. He pulled away, baring his teeth in a grimace. He knew his lips were coloured by the touch and the blood and it did nothing to ease his ill mood.   
  
"Why am I obsessed with pain?" he muttered, squeezing his eyes shut as he turned his head to the side. "Causing it. Feeling it. If I am to be a god I will be a terrible and destructive one. I can feel it, Sigvard."

 

SIGVARD -

 

That flag again. Darting into Sigvard's vision. With mouth ajar he listened along to Cobra's fretting, and he smiled a little, and he nodded again, but in spite of it all, the idea didn't seem to take root. Even gods seemed small and trivial next to all this. But there was some compulsion in him, at least, to address the man; he had some vague memory of being punished for not listening.   
  
"No, no," he murmured. He had such perfect confidence. Destruction was angry and violent in a way that the roaring sea next to them wouldn't abide for long; it could not be permanent—he knew this in his fleeting haze—and would always be counter-acted by prosperity and burgeoning life. There was a balance in it. Like the fires that cleared great forests to make room for new growth.   
  
None of this 'insight' made its way to words, of course. He turned his lips to Cobra's cheek, and opened them, and traced him with the edge of his teeth before nipping at him just to feel the plumpness of his flesh. "I'll make it better." He'd been commanded to. "I can temper you. Hm? Like the water. I can wash you of everything." Like so: His sweeping hands over dark flesh, up and down, up and down. Grinning again in his own absurdity. "You see?"

 

COBRA -

 

The wash. The baths. Cobra's body swelled with a deep sigh as his brow furrowed, already mourning the absence of the baths in the desert. Another reason he wanted to hug the coast; after his first wretched, ragged trek across the desert to make it to Navan, he swore he would never become a sand-dusted nomad again. How could he a true Urdai with such an attitude; their prophet, no less? How could he temper a spirit walk across the plains when even one stinging sandfly bite was enough to make him want to peel the skin from his flesh?   
  
"Don't speak of bathing," he said sorrowfully, even as he pushed his body back against the massaging hands, his own palms travelling down SIgvard's thick arms in kind. "Don't kiss me, for the taste of blood reminds me of the desert. Just touch me, Sigvard, please, even if it is to choke me. I do not mind having visions for you," he keened, teeth tugging at the shell of the man's ear before his tongue traced down to the lobe. Sniffing, he tried to fight the swelling pang inside him. In his mind's eye, and perhaps even those of a man in the throes of hallucination, an apparition of eyes set just over the slave's cheekbones might appear, glowing and ethereal in a way that seemed to make a cosmic light shift and trace across each eyelash. And the knowing in them; the knowing was terrible, housing small black pinpoints of spite and fury in the very centre of a burning iris.    
  
Each breath seemed to echo in his own head. He wondered if perhaps the blood had shared some of the drug or if other forces were at play. The thoughts did not stop him from rocking his body up against the other's, squeezing down his sides to the small of his back, grabbing flesh for leverage to better help his grinding as he called the man's name. 

 

SIGVARD -

 

All the universe fell away, now, and Cobra was his singular fixation. He seemed to be separate from everything; violent, cracking like thunder, thrumming with energies that were far too big for his body and straining to get out. It was wonderful. It was terrifying. Sigvard felt as though he was standing on the precipice of some great cliff, and in a sense he was; in the state he was in, childlike wonder could turn to frantic horror in a moment. He was losing surety. His ideas of healing and bathing weren't working.   
  
Hands on him. A body. There was an urgency to it that he didn't know how to answer right away. He wanted to kiss him, but there couldn't be any kissing, now; just touch, just touch. His thick leg slipped further between the slave's, and his wide open hand fell from the back of his neck to between his shoulderblades to pull him close. Even this felt clumsy. It wouldn't do.   
  
So he rolled Cobra until his back was against stone, and took him by the hips—bleeding more into the thin fabric of his garment—and hauled his plush ass up into his lap as he knelt between his legs. Another tug, for good measure, and another, to make sure his godling was seated properly against him. He curled over him, then, and since he couldn't kiss his lips, he kissed other things: His chin, his temple, and one of those unseen eyes.

Pale fingers snatched up one of Cobra's wrists, and brought his hand to settle among blond hair. "Here," he breathed, half-commanding, half-pleading. Trying and failing to shake away the world behind him, over him, everywhere,  _ singing _ to him now. "You'll keep saying my name." Abandoning the slave's hand, he found his other, and put it again on the small of his back. "You'll keep feeling me." As if he could be some foundation for him, some bedrock.    
  
One palm open against the floor, then, to keep him up, barely. The other open against the southerner's throat. He thought it must be done; the man had said the words, and he'd prophesied it before, and it must be done. He squeezed tighter, tighter, until he felt the shifting of windpipe and tendons against his grip.

  
  


COBRA -

 

His back touched the floor with a grunt of surprise on his part, quickly adjusting to the new pose and lifting his hips to be tugged forward into the blond’s lap. His cock, plumped up from his grinding, pushed out the floaty fabric and nudged the man’s stomach as he bent forward to kiss his jaw. “Sigvard,” he called, fingers curling tight in pale hair once they were guided. Even the hand that would have curled around the man’s back shifted to the other side of his head instead.

He welcomed the man’s hand to his throat with a soft sound, forgoing the pretence of taking a final breath. This way brought about the choke faster with less bruising. As his breathing squeezed down to a wheeze, the cosmic eyes began to grow, eclipsing his own vision as his physical eyes rolled back into his head.(edited)

  
  


asmine. So much, the scent was cloying. The fluttering of a white shift robe before he sky darkened with smoke and nightfall, turning the vision to something terrible. The taste of blood filled his mouth again but he was sure that Sigvard was not kissing him. Flames. Flames so tall that they dwarfed him, he could walk through them like a forest if he was so inclined . A small figure ahead of him seemed to be doing exactly that, touching the flames but coming to no harm. Through the vision, Cobra watched as the figure turned, his dark skin wet and shiny with something that brought a coppery scent cutting through the smoke. His smile was tinged pink when he called,  _ are you coming? _

His gaze seemed to pass right through Cobra but the statement held such gravity that his knees buckled. Helpless, he took a few steps forward himself before he was suddenly passed by other dark shapes, all moving at various paces, joining the figure to walk through the fiery veil.

He awoke with a surprised gasp, still on the floor. Sigvard has stopped before he’d choked to death; that was good. With a vague keening sound he lifted his arms that had dropped when he’d passed out, demanding without words to be picked up. “I don’t know if what I saw was the afterlife or something else,” he murmured, brow furrowed in confusion.

 

SIGVARD -

 

As time had lost all meaning, Sigvard did not count the seconds—minutes, maybe—that Cobra was gone from him. When the man's body had gone limp, so had his grasp. He held his body low against the one beneath him, and breathed deeply and evenly as if to coach it back to life when it was ready to rejoin him; his forehead went down to stone, and he watched the distant water through the railing around the terrace. The sky seemed to be falling into it, somehow, and as the imaginary floodwaters came over the beach and up the steep embankment to wash over their tangled bodies, he pushed his cheek to Cobra's and closed his eyes to it.   
  
At last. Whether or not his godling reached out to him, he would have plucked him up all the same; circling his waist with his sturdy arms, he rocked back to sit on his heels. Kissing at the nape of his neck, where his fingers had been before. Not guilt, not yet. The pale giant was much too far from sense to feel these things, or to really be aware of what he'd done. He was only touching, as commanded.   
  
There was an unsteadiness in the way he got to his feet that could be attributed, maybe, to the fact that everything that ever was and had been and would be was being pulled apart and thrust together again. Once he managed it, it was better to stay still than to walk. He cradled Cobra, like that. Pushing his face into the junction of his neck and shoulder. The afterlife, he'd said? Wouldn't he know it?   
  
"Who did you see?" It was no use to close his eyes, he realized, as his mind would wreak more havoc with the black and empty canvas. He watched the gulls circle. Spots came to his vision each time he heard their call. "Was it a sublime place?" A great hall, he imagined, or a hill and dale shrugging off morning mists. "I haven't killed you, I don't think." A moment to hold his breath. To listen for a heartbeat in the body that clung to him, or that he clung to, at any rate. Even then, he couldn't be sure it wasn't an illusion. "You live?"

  
  


COBRA -

 

He drank in air greedily but slowly, eyes wide and haunted as he clung to the broad man and stared out at the horizon with ghosts of the vision playing across his mind. "A man, covered in blood," he answered after a time. "And... gates, I think, but they were burning. If it was a sublime place, I do not think it is one where good soldiers go." He did know of the halls with long tables where the Northlanders would go when they died victorious or fell in battle. With all his years living amongst the snow, he could not escape some of the most well-known legends and beliefs of the land. He had never believed he would go there himself, however. He was only half Northlander, or possibly half of something else entirely. It didn't seem like the kind of place where Urdai would tread. Their spirits stayed in the earth.    
  
"He asked me to follow him. Others did. Perhaps he was talking to me and not them." Frowning, he pulled back enough to see the other man's face, though the glazed look in Sig's eyes spoke volumes about how the drugs still affected him. "The flames didn't harm them. Any of them. If it was a cursed place where wicked souls go, wouldn't they suffer? Isn't that the point of such places?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Alien to him, all of it. Sigvard didn't recognize the figure of a man in blood, or gates of fire, or this idea of cursed places. He recognized hunger. He was starving. He wanted to gorge himself, and to observe what the activity of eating meant for his place in the universe.   
  
It was that thought that was occupying his thick head for the moment of silence after Cobra's speaking. And then: "Wicked souls?" Of course he had an idea of what constituted a wicked soul; he  _ ought _ to have had an idea, for he  _ was _ one. But this silly notion of being punished in death—that vexed him. "Is that what your people do? Send the rotten among you to a place designed to harm them?" In his own country, it was all the same. Valiant warriors would be carried off to the afterlife, and exalted once there, yes; but all men and women and children would find themselves carrying on in the same otherworldly realm. Even the wickedest among them.   
  
"It's a rite, maybe," he mused. Instinct had begun to take over, and he'd started to truly cradle Cobra as if he were a child; his open palm patted his back, and he rocked him as he would a fussy infant. He looked down at the floor, and found that the stones were inviting his feet to go this way and that. So he wandered over the terrace in no pattern in particular. "So much of you is fire." And blood, for that matter. "As boys, we do these things, and then we are men. It is something you must do to be Keht, maybe."   
  
He was more and more conscious of the limitations of his own voice, his vocabulary. Not as funny as before. Too much talk of unreal things was blurring lines that the drug had blurred heavily to begin with, and he was putting himself into a cold sweat pretending that it was all perfectly natural. "What did you think of it? Were you frightened?"

 

COBRA -

 

The blond man would do well to continue to pace the balcony and stave off his appetite, for surely Irfan was skulking about the room inside under the guise of overseeing its cleaning. While the servants would probably not draw the Northlander’s eye, the guard would. For once, the little deity seemed to tolerate the man’s coddling, seeking comfort in the crook of his shoulder with a quiet hum.  There was a soothing quality to the way his back was patted, he could not deny it. If there had been witnesses, though, he would have had Sigvard’s throat.

“We don’t send them anywhere, that is just how it is,” he corrected. “Wicked souls suffer in the afterlife. The good remain on earth to observe until they are reborn, if ever at all.” From the land they came and to it they returned. It seemed very simple to Cobra, but Sigvard’s notion of ignoring another option for the wicked seemed to make it even more simple. He wasn’t sure how to take the news that bad souls might go unpunished.

“There are some tribes who walk with the Urdai who have tattoos, scars, things like that,” he murmured. “Kehts are expected to taste the flames at least once in their lives but I have had more than my fair share on the day the circus burned to the ground.”

“I didn’t... feel particularly frightened,” he started carefully. “A little afraid to push ahead, but even more unsettled by the thought of staying put. I did not look behind me and I didn’t want to. The air felt wrong there. Going through the gate was better.”

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard noticed with some relief that the earlier violence that had Cobra’s body crackling and writhing on the floor was by now mostly gone. Talking seemed to do the trick of calming him. To say nothing of how he was holding the slave, wandering the terrace, leaning slightly back to make a day-bed of his broad chest and shoulders. He liked the weight of it. And skin on skin. They ought to have stayed like that forever, connected, both together with the entirety of creation and somehow separate from it.   
  
It was good he hadn’t been frightened—he was nodding, hearing it—or that if he had been, it was at least the sort of fear that spurred him into action. That was the brave thing to do, the strong thing.   
  
Wandering circles had grown tighter and tighter, and now he was dizzy. Over to that squat stone railing, to set his godling down on it once more; he stood between his legs, and took a balancing grip of his hips, and after a moment of indecision let his head fall into his shoulder so that he could rock his chin forward and snap skin between his teeth. Could do so, and did. “Is it always prophecy?” He mumbled, carrying on. “You’ve seen it—will it come, will you have to do this thing, with the man and the gate?”

 

COBRA -

 

He'd held on to him too long. Settling down soured into brooding, a tension growing in Cobra's face as he peered over the man's shoulder, clinging tighter as the circles he paced became smaller. Sigvard was lucky to have set him down when he did, otherwise this tension might have coiled up like a spring and caused something terrible. As it was, the bite to his shoulder released some of it, prevented him from dwelling too much on his own awful thoughts. With a quiet yip, he swore under his breath and bit him back in kind, on his bicep. If he bit him again on his ruined shoulder the man would probably strike him again.    
  
"I don't think it's ever been prophecy," he muttered, with suspicion in his eyes. "Now that I think about it, I've only ever been shown things that are now, or ancient, or not even real at all. Symbols. Clues. No; I've never cheated fate by seeing ahead in time. I've seen things that are so old that no one is alive who remembers them, but I've never seen the future."

 

SIGVARD -

 

“Symbols,” Sigvard parroted, muttering into the slave’s dark skin. “Clues.” Slowly grasping the meaning of the words. The stone floor was warm from the sun, now; he lifted his head to squint in the direction of the great fiery thing, and set his teeth against the sudden awe that threatened to knock the air from his lungs. He was tiring of this, a little. But he knew there were wicked plants that would make men delusional for hours and hours and hours, and so he was trying very desperately to muster up his strength for the long haul.   
  
It was either the awe or the lingering dizziness that had him pushing back some ways from the railing and Cobra’s body, and slowly coming to kneel there. “How do you work it out?” Momentarily distracted by moving his hands in and out of shadow, he eventually brought them up to cradle Cobra’s feet. “How do you take meaning from it?” Rather than pull at the man’s leg, he ducked forward to kiss at his naked ankle in quiet worship. “To lead your people, won’t you need to make sense of these things, these visions?” The side of his foot, then, and next the arch.

 

COBRA -

 

The man's hands naturally came to thread through the locks of blond hair once it was within reach, running down to the nape and cupping his neck briefly before Sigvard's head slid lower still and he watched in bemusement as he kissed his feet. "By thinking," he answered simply, tilting his head to one side. "About what I know, about what others have told me. Myths and legends, political rumours. I don't always work it out, though. There are still things I see that seem to have no meaning at all, and perhaps that is because I do not know enough."   
  
Urd. The statement sounded almost sagely. He furrowed his brow at his own words, lips quirking in a grin and he ran his fingers through his own hair instead. He still felt much too young to be speaking so eloquently about such matters, like a tribe elder or a priest. Distracting himself, he lifted his foot to the man's lips and forced a smug smile as he looked down at his attentions.    
  
"You'll help me, though, won't you?" he insisted, chuckling as he twisted his foot away from the man and briefly traced his jawline with his toes. "A soldier must know things. And you have been to the Capital, have you not? I can't recall."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Ah.  _ Thinking _ , yes, of course, something Sigvard was at once doing too much and too little of. He listened quietly, and tried to make sense of all these abstract things. Cobra had freed himself; so his empty hands fell to his lap, and he fell back to sit on his heels and look up at him.   
  
"I know things," he said faintly, nodding. More defensive than foreboding, though time would tell whether or not all the things he knew would do them any good. "I spent some days in the capital. Coming here. I'll help you, yes. We'll work it out. The gate." It had been close to his first sight of water after that long, long trek across the desert. He remembered wanting to walk into those rolling waves and to disappear forever. He could see them now. Between the stone rail, between Cobra's legs. The water was beckoning him, and the whole of the earth seemed to want to make it easy to go. Gravity went forward, and he swayed in it.   
  
It seemed suddenly important to communicate his state of mind, and his eyes flashed up to the southerner's: "But I feel as though I've been to all places." His voice, his face, was hopeful; surely a seer would understand this delightful insanity completely. Everything and everywhere was the same place, all at once. He'd shaved in the capital. He'd bled there. Wasn't that very sad and wonderful? "Can we go down to the water?" He wanted to bask in it, or to kill something. "Will you take me there?"

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra followed along with what the man said until he abruptly mentioned the gate. He still seemed to be under the influence of the peyote and Cobra knew it would linger for a great while longer. It made sense that he would feel some divine connection to the land with the drug; that was the reason it was popular with so many of the nation's tribespeople, not just the Urd.    
  
"The water?" He raised his eyebrows, looking over his shoulder and down at the lapping waves below. Save for the times that Hamad had taken him on a pleasure cruise, mostly in the early years of his ownership, Cobra had never been inclined to enjoy Navan's jewel sea. One reason was that he did not know how to swim. Another was an eerie feeling he got from time to time when he looked at it; occasionally, even a flash of the pale green sea turning dark, deep and all-encompassing. He was not sure if it was an omen or simply a cautionary tale from the past. But there were shallows along the beach.   
  
"We'd have to put on clothes," he pointed out to the man, looking him over in disdain, then down at his own torn apparel. He sighed, pushing off the wall. With any luck, Irfan would have ceased his lurking in his bedroom.    
  
"Aren't you hungry?"   
  
Damn.


	10. Playing Nicely

COBRA -

 

He hadn't had the audacity to smoke indoors but he could see the cigar tucked behind his ear where he leaned against the wall by the door, one foot propped up on the cool surface. The other servants had disappeared, leaving nothing but clean floors, folded clothes and tidied desks in their wake. A platter of food was laid out on the low table. Despite the audience, Cobra couldn't ignore the urgency in his belly for breakfast. He sat down in a huff and snapped up a few piece of meat before he bothered to answer.   
  
"We're going out," he announced curtly. "To the beaches."   
  
"Not like that, you're not," the guard shot back boldly. "Hamad wants you covered, and followed. You aren't to leave Navan or show your foot to anyone."   
  
Cobra clicked his tongue, snatching up a plum from the platter. "Sigvard, this is Irfan, a guard," he introduced him with a wrinkle in his nose. "Don't kill him but don't trust him, either."

 

SIGVARD -

 

It was bad enough to be inside, away from the sun and wind and gulls. The presence of this stranger in the dim quarters was too much like a wasp hiding in the shadow of a mead pot—his skin crawled all the same under his insidious gaze, and he waved a hand in the air to dismiss his irritating buzzing. It wasn’t right that Cobra allowed him to speak in that way.   
  
Bristling, the Northlander lumbered his way over to the basin where the water had only just been replaced and thrust his face immediately into it. When he scrubbed at his cheeks and the new growth of his beard, he earned a stinging reminder of the wounds on his palms; so he used the backs of his hands instead, and smeared the thin wash of blood off on his naked thighs.   
  
The idea of covering up very violently disagreed with him, as he evidently didn’t see a problem in some pale and hulking foreigner rushing bare-assed down the beach. There were sturdier-looking cotton garments among the clothes laid out, he noticed, and he ordinarily would have been eager to wear something so practical; but it was too much to imagine a layer between him and the massive sea.   
  
Even the bandage at his shoulder was beginning to itch at him, having been slept on and trained in and beaten by Cobra’s fist. So he plucked it off him.

He did remember what Cobra had said before their scrap; this one here, Irfan, was who he’d meant to  _ play _ with, he was the intended subject for the tinctures and things now running through Sig’s own body. He may not have immediately disliked him, if not for his barking introduction; but now that he made a show of himself, it aggravated him to think that Cobra could at all enjoy this Irfan creature. He was growing frustrated. Feeling about as trapped in his own skin as he did in clothing, but (thankfully) perfectly aware he couldn’t strip himself of this, too.   
  
Having washed up, he more or less immediately undid the effort by heading to the table and scooping a handful of foodstuffs into his fist. And another, in his other hand.   
  
“I don’t want to be clothed,” he boomed, not quite meaning to be loud. “Nor followed. Least of all by you, little vermin.” He was clear, he thought, even though he was eyeing the balcony rather than Irfan. Thinking ahead of himself, he was swaying again in shifting gravity. He could clear the railing, and go down the embankment, and then heading to water by sight or sound would be easy. Provided it wasn’t a hallucination. Chewing at a bit of dried fruit dangling from his palm, he decided he would try it, and so marched towards the terrace.

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra watched the man barge to the wash basin with disdain, knowing he'd take to Irfan just as well as a cat took to an invasion of territory. His gaze turned withering as the insult was fired, setting down the gnawed plum stone and reaching for grapes from the platter, when the trajectory of the blond's body caused him some alarm. Sober, the huge idiot wouldn't be fool enough to scale the building, but he most definitely would while intoxicated.   
  
"Sigvard, no!" he cried, scrambling up from his seat to catch the man. His face contorted in a wince as his cut foot screeched in complaint with the movement. Limping, he caught the man around the middle, unable to haul him backwards by any means but certainly able to get his claws into the meat of the man's side. "You idiot!" he snapped, losing his temper with the pain. "You can't throw yourself off the balcony, naked or otherwise! I need you alive, and we are supposed to be keeping a low profile?"   
  
Irfan, pushing off the wall, watching the pair of them with a dry look as he bent to take a stuffed fig from the platter. He was clearly not one for formalities but he couldn't be blamed for that, not with the way Hamad treated him in Cobra's company, where he was much less a guard and more like a makeshift member of a harem. "This is supposed to be the man who'll make Hamad king?" he sneered, clearing the morsel in one bite but managing to speak around the mouthful effortlessly. "Pathetic."   
  
"It's peyote," Cobra glowered defensively over his shoulder, keeping his grip on the man.    
  
"It's reckless," Irfan shot back. Cobra grit his teeth at the resemblance to his own attitudes, before the blond brute managed to make him care about him. "Sober him up with some heartsbane."    
  
It was a good idea. "Sigvard," Cobra murmured, frowning. "Come back inside. I'll make it cool again."

 

SIGVARD -

 

If the Northlander’s mind was quick, he might have parsed Cobra’s words as they were said and quit his ridiculous adventure right away; but as it was, they just struck him as more  _ noise _ , and his body worked with some difficulty against the slave’s added weight.   
  
It was the guard’s accusation, ‘ _ pathetic _ ,’ that finally made him halt. Blue eyes flashed over his shoulder to get a look at him—he wasn’t sure he wanted to commit to fully turning—and if he wasn’t so damned  _ starved _ , he might have chucked both handfuls of breakfast at him. The puny, pretty fuck was nothing in all this. Even the world seemed to know it: It swelled around him, the stone walls flexing their hugeness, and the tiles on the floor scaling larger and larger to dwarf him.   
  
The promise of heartsbane, though, seemed to calm him after a begrudging silence. He nodded, and turned, and made his way back to the cushions; having learned his lesson in self-administering Cobra’s poisons, he would let the slave do it the proper way. The fabrics, of course, were still bursting with patterns and colours and that light he couldn’t fully place. He treated them with the same tenderness as before as he sat among them.   
  
“Why is he here?” Now he  _ did _ watch Irfan, jutting his chin at him as he spoke to his godling. “Is he upset that Hamad thinks he is incompetent, and so picked us for the task instead, hm?” He stuffed some cashews into his mouth, and carried on. “I want to crush him. He would do better to stay away.”

 

COBRA -

 

Breathing a sigh of relief, Cobra released his grip on the man as he finally swayed back in the direction of the cushions. He could feel the dislike between the two men crackling in the room like an invisible fire, but this was no foreign atmosphere to him. "Behave," he clicked his tongue with a sour expression, towards the both of them, as he passed on his way to the poison cabinet.    
  
"As I said," Irfan carried on gamely, not flinching under the bigger man's hateful gaze in the slightest. "Hamad wants you watched. You are valuable to him now, and he has valuable things guarded carefully. I should know," he clarified with a smug grin growing wider on his face. "I've guarded Cobra for many years."    
  
Cobra was quick to join Sigvard's side with the tiny bottle in hand lest he charge the teasing guard. Popping the cap, he ordered the man to open his mouth and administered two drops before taking one himself, rubbing the bridge of his nose as the chill washed through him. Turning to his closet with a clearer head, he blinked as he found Irfan already holding out an olive-green pair of split pants and a chest band for him. He took them with a shrug and stripped to redress.   
  
A pair of burgundy harem pants were pitched at Sigvard's face a moment later. "Dress," Irfan jeered. "You are too violent and slow-tongued to be a whore." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

“Piss,” Sigvard balked, in answer to the guard’s attempt at riling him with jealousy. The slave himself had done much worse in that regard, and anyway, Sig was happy to delude himself into thinking those years and any adventures with some rotten little guardsman were now over. He was tempered by this thought. Of course he would have leapt at him all the same, tempered or no, but here was his treat—he followed Cobra’s command above anything.   
  
The heartsbane was less pleasant than before. There was a muddy quality to it, as it threw itself into the mix infecting his blood. But it was bracing, yes—frigid in delightful ways, coursing through him, and he was nursing his tongue for more before he’d finished swallowing the first. He could shrug off the last lethargy from the milk of the poppy, and it was either the essence or his rage that had him forget any notions of going to the seaside. The cushions’ wild dance was subdued, at least.   
  
He was ignoring the southerners’ interactions as he enjoyed some deep and rapid breathing—closing his eyes, able to imagine himself among the mountains again, made so much more vivid with the lingering effects of the peyote. He sat straight. He felt every inch of him, down to his fingertips, and finally began to understand where he ended and the rest of the world began.

There was the brush of limp fabric across his face.   
  
The blond did the obvious thing: He took up the garment in his meaty hands and tore it in two. He was standing, and now with none of his earlier tenderness regarding the cushions. Twisting the burgundy fabric round and round and holding it taut between his hands to make a garrote of it, he lunged toward the guard. Not to kill him, no, no, he’d been told not to do such a thing (and what a shame that was, really). But to do him great harm, yes. To hopefully slip this makeshift rope around his neck and throttle him.   
  
The first matter, of course, was getting him on the ground. He saw the flash of a blade, he thought, but it didn’t matter. He opened his grips by half so that his fingers could twist in Irfan’s own clothes, and he put all of his strength and his weight into wrenching him to the side, down, down towards the stone.   
  
  


COBRA -

 

A grunt of a scoff came from Irfan's throat, wrinkling his nose at the man before his eyes widened with the swift display of violence. Suddenly, he found himself in a combat stance, grappling and wrestling with a man who perhaps matched him in musculature but who definitely exceeded him in height and therefore weight. Cursing, he had his dagger in his hand as fast as you'd expect any guard too, but with the command not to kill him it was all but useless except to get between his own throat and the cloth the other would choke him with, sawing as best he could with an non-serrated blade to cut through it.   
  
Cobra considered intervening, but the ache from where Sigvard's fists had struck him was a sore reminder of the consequences. Shambling back to the cabinet, he took his sweet time in finding an ointment to soothe bruises (peppermint) and taking his sweet time in applying it. Sipping at cup of cool tea from the breakfast tray, he looked down at the pile made by the two struggling men's bodies with disdain.    
  
"You are both children," he scolded them, voice even and apathetic. "And you, Sigvard - at this rate you will die before we reach the capital. Your temper is worse than mine and you are jealous, too. It makes you weak. Irfan is a bastard and he always will be, but it should not be so easy to get a fight out of you." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Irfan was a good fight. The knife and the garment were futile against each other, and so Sigvard abandoned the effort; his grip was quickly upon the man's knife-hand instead, and then his teeth were, gnawing him bloody until the blade was dropped and sucking at the taste of iron. The rest of him was awkward, laying on the guard—he felt blows from hands and feet, a body grappling and scrambling for an upper hand, but pain and desperation only spurred the Northlander on. He was roaring when he quit biting that dark fist, and reared up now to spit a mess of blood and saliva into his face. Laughing at the sight of it. Wanting to mash it in with his open palm, but Irfan was too quick.   
  
It had been a mistake to let the man have the opportunity take his wrist; in an instant it was twisted, and there was a heaving force up at him, and he felt gravity go wrong again—not the drugs, not this time. He was under him, and his weight did no good here on the floor. The scrape of the blade on stone. Like with Cobra, before; when he was picking the bits of glass out of his palm. Irfan wouldn't use his weapon, and the deftness of  _ avoiding _ it when it would be so easy was somehow remarkable, but Sig wasn't about to stop and praise him. His heel hooked behind the man's knee. He made a claw of his body, wrapped him with every arm and leg, and pulled him uselessly close. Neither of them could do a thing, like this.   
  
It was just so, trying to wrap his thick arm about Irfan's neck to choke him, that he heard the lecture from across the room. Another violent bark. Laughter or a shout, it wasn't clear. The slave didn't know how wrong he was, but he could not explain it now.

He was on the floor; his back against stone, and Irfan's back against his chest. The guard's hands protected his throat from being crushed in the crook of Sigvard's elbow, but the northerner didn't consider quitting his attempt. His other hand braced it; it came up, now, to slap at Irfan's cheek as he hissed in his ear. "Ask me, cunt—ask me to move off."

  
  


COBRA -

 

Even half-choking, Irfan managed to grin, true to his nature. Sigvard couldn't have known that he was in his element among the grunt and struggle; that this was nothing new or fearful to him. It was the reason he was able to keep from panicking, to refrain from using the dagger which would have ended the tussle so swiftly. The insult just seemed to egg him one, his dark brown eyes beady with satisfaction. "He has an ego," he drawled, voice hoarse.   
  
"He does," Cobra agreed coldly, watching the pair with something close to dislike in the pit of his chest. The pain put him in a bad mood. The peppermint felt soothing, but it was no milk of the poppy, and the pain remained just behind the fresh feeling. He was growing tired of it; patience worn out just as easily as the blond had torn through those pants. Draining the cup in one swift motion, he set it down loudly on the tray. "Disengage," he sneered, storming closer and planting a foot on the side of the Northerners face, pressing his cheek to the floor. "Irfan was a whore before he was a guard. Wounding his pride is pointless; he doesn't have any."    
  
The wicked little snicker from the crook of the man's elbow confirmed the tale. "I'll call him a big, strong man for five coppers," he offered salaciously.

 

SIGVARD -

 

Two little wasps, then, and all their ridiculous buzzing. In the throes of violence, Sig was in no mood to quit, particularly if his only reward was to be demeaned further—he snarled and shouted his displeasure at the foot on his cheek, and with fresh rage tightened his snaking arm to crush Irfan’s windpipe between his own hands. He was a cornered dog, now. His godling had made himself his enemy, by aligning himself with his kin instead of his disciple, and for all that fucking talk of needing an ally! He could take the both of them, he thought. And if Irfan had no pride to wound, he at least had a body.   
  
So one hand snapped up to snatch Cobra’s ankle, and to wrench it so that he would lose his balance and fall flat on his ass. If choking the guard wouldn’t work, he’d go for maiming him instead: His great hand opened to cover his face, and to sink his blunt nails into his flesh as best he could manage, and to claw over his eyes and nose and lips.

 

COBRA -

 

The heartsbane hadn’t been enough. Or perhaps Sigvard had simply decided to make enemies of them both out of jealousy. Cobra knew the fucking would become a problem as it always did when any man demanded exclusivity without applying the realities of the world to the demand. He had already lost his temper, but he lost it more when the hard stone floor connected with his arse.

“I AM YOUR GOD,” he bellowed, whipping upwards despite the ache in his muscles. Livid, furious, the Northlander might have caught a glimpse of narrowed eyes and bared teeth before the smaller man jammed his thumbs into his eye sockets. “You will do as I say or I will take your sight,” he hissed.

Irfan, with scarcely enough air to breathe let alone speak, could only chime in with a wheeze, kicking feebly at his body started to go limp.

“I need you both,” Cobra growled. “Let him go!”

 

SIGVARD -

 

If Sigvard could manage some seconds more, even howling against the pressure against his eyes, Irfan would lose himself to blackness for a time; and in his drug-addled state, it was more than worth the risk. He felt the full weight of him. And then, at last, released him, shoving his unconscious body away and flinging his own from the slave's clawing grip.   
  
He was on his hands and knees. Blinking, seeing stars and blackness where there should have been the floor below, he couldn't distinguish these visions from the earlier ones. He retched, empty. None of his meagre breakfast coming up. Onto his back, then. Testing what he could see of the ceiling—it was coming to him, gradually—he recalled the earlier lecture. "This." He was heaving, his voice coming through hoarse and thin. Waving his hand to indicate Irfan. "You think this is about jealousy? Or his hurt pride. Do you think these things?"

 

COBRA -

 

Flung back with a snarl, Cobra did not relent. As the bigger man settled onto his back, Cobra's weight was quick to follow, sat upon his chest. Fuming, he spared a glance to Irfan, who was passed out but still breathing, thankfully, judging by the shallow rise and fall of his stomach.    
  
"This!" Cobra barked back, baring his teeth. If the man was wearing a shirt he would have grabbed it, as it was he simply slapped him across the face. "Is about your stupidity! Your insolence! Your  _ violence _ ! I have not been so black and blue since the day I was arrested by the Navanese, and by whose hand now?! Yours." He spat upon the ground by the blond's head, leaning close. "You don't follow the most simple of instructions, how can you hope to achieve our task in the Capital? Will I have broken limbs by the time we get there?"    
  
He heard coughing as Irfan slowly came to. Straightening up, Cobra looked down at Sigvard with a sneer. "Irfan, take off your belt."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Too exhausted to summon ire, Sigvard only fought to steady his breathing. He shook his head. Bruises, bruises. What was this narrative, what was this story that led to broken limbs? Even in the fog of his dosage, he remembered. "You attacked me," he croaked. He closed his eyes against the maddening half-sight. "You leapt on me—you clawed and bit and struck me." It was after these blows that he had struck him very severely, and not before. But he had done it. He had done it, yes. Was that his terrible offense?   
  
There was the sound of Irfan's body. Grief surged in him and made him sick. He turned his head to the side, as if he would retch again; his eyes pinched tighter against the blackness. "Should I not have defended myself?" He could see his little master's thinking, in making him witness this, but there was no lesson to be learned in it; there was no  _ jealousy _ in what he'd done. "Should I have taken it without complaint? Are you going to punish me, now, for not accepting it—is it a slave you want to make of me?"

 

COBRA -

 

"That was to be expected," Cobra answered curtly. "You pushed me aside at my most vulnerable, then howled in complaint when I decided to seek someone else instead,  _ then _ ," he paused for a breath, gritting his teeth as he stared down at the bite mark beneath them, pressing a hand over the now-bare wound. "You said this would not matter. That it would fade for you. Even now you treat it with disdain." His hand came away with dots of blood that had seeped from placed where the fresh scab had been pulled apart by Sigvard's fighting. Chances of infection had been slight before, but not so much now.    
  
Panting, on all fours, Irfan held out his belt. Cobra took the strip of leather and folded it over in his hands, pulling them taut so the two halves snapped together with a great sense of familiarity. "So tell me what I should do, Sigvard," he sighed. "How do I discipline a Northerner? Should I whip you? Use this belt to choke myself? Perhaps I should just take Irfan's pants and fuck him into the floor. What would make you learn not to be so blind?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

This made blue eyes flash open. Lies, lies. “I  _ held _ you at your most vulnerable!” He was heaving again, feeling himself go quite insane, unsure by now if the drug had infected his memory or his language or both. “I gave you comfort.” His father; he remembered. The weeping. Hadn’t it gone that way? He thought he remembered. Yes, yes. He had a grip on it now. “I only pushed you aside when you showed your gratitude by taunting me again—hurting me again, as you don’t seem to tire of it.”   
  
His gaze slid to the belt. He gave all his hate to it, in knitted brow and set teeth. “I would like to see you try compassion instead of cruelty. But if you can’t manage that, I’ll take the whip.”

 

COBRA -

 

"What a selective memory you have," the contortionist drawled, flinching with the memory of the tumble he'd taken while his body had been stretched near to its limit. Sigvard should have had a stronger brain between his ears, he told himself; he should have recalled the times he'd told him about the man in the night tent, about how he had been touched in such poses. Some teasing should not have eclipsed that, especially when the brute proved time and time again that his suspicions were true. He was jealous; impossibly so, no matter how many times he denied it. It was already troublesome; there was no telling how troublesome it would become once he did the things necessary at the Capital to gain access to the King.   
  
"Compassion," he parroted, frowning at the man. "I can show you something close to it, but I will remember if you do not show it back, Sigvard." He adjusted his grip on the belt, making a loop through the clasp. "Give me your hands. I wish to bind them." He felt warm breath on his shoulder as Irfan leaned in behind him, peering curiously at the man below.    
  
"He won't learn," he sniped in a knowing tone, dark eyes flicking to give the slave a sideways glance.    
  
"Shut up and fetch the alcohol," Cobra said stiffly. "I will have obedience, and I will  _ not _ have an infection."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard frowned. He didn’t know this game. He didn’t know where being bound intersected with ‘something like compassion,’ except perhaps for fucking; but he didn’t think the lesson he was supposed to learn, here, was that he could win a fuck from Cobra by being obstinate. It was still maddeningly difficult to work out whether or not he was sober. With some hesitance, he offered his wrists.   
  
It was when he felt the slip and creak of tightening leather that his face went white—or whiter, at any rate—in sudden realization. ‘Something like compassion’ could go the wrong way, too; as in the mercy of death. Of course he knew he wasn’t to die, but there were a hundred agonies between here and there. And now he was tied, and there were two of them. “For the bite.” A statement shot through with so much uncertainty it should have been a question. His voice, for the first time since meeting this horrible, beautiful creature, held some distant fear. The dagger; he’d lost the place of it. “Do you mean to cut me?

 

COBRA -

 

He pulled the belt tight, and pushed the man's bound hands down to rest upon his sternum. He didn't have anything more to restrain him with but something told him that in this state of mind he would not be moving his hands as recklessly as he had before. "Cut you?" he raised an eyebrow. "No. But this will hurt, but it is a necessity of your own creation, and you will endure because I say so and because whether you realise it or not, everything I do is to help us achieve our goals."   
  
The potent smell of raw alcohol filled the room as Irfan pulled the stopper; Cobra could feel the fumes on his eyes. Pouring enough of the stuff on a fresh cotton swab to make excess drip down onto the wound below, a mere taste of what was to come, he instructed the guard to pin him down before he set about cleaning the cut. He was not exactly gentle, but he was thorough, sure to get inside all edges where infection could be lurking under a piece of disturbed scab. When the bitter deed was done, the bite was sealed away in fresh bandages once more, and Cobra kept the man's hands tied.    
  
"No more fighting," Cobra growled as he washed his hands in the basin Irfan brought over. "No more wrestling, no more jealousy -  _ yes _ ," his glare halted protests. "Jealousy. Stop denying it like a fool. If I want to get into the King's chambers it is the only option I have. I can't have you exposing us in a rage. You will  _ learn _ ." Gritting his teeth, he frowned as he brought his hands back to gingerly check the bruises above his kidneys in a small wave of self pity.    
  
"I've met lots of men like this," Irfan said slyly, leaning back against the side of the bed and watching them both. "At the brothel, they always wanted to wrestle first. It is important to them to be victorious, to be  _ everything _ . I don't think he will change. They never did."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Ah; here came sobriety, unmistakeable, ripping through every nerve like fire to awaken it. Sigvard had mewled, before. He could not bring himself to do it now, to make himself weak before the heap of stinking wet shit whose belt now bound him; so he set his jaw so tightly that he was sure he’d split a tooth. He couldn’t manage to unclench it, even when the treatment was over. Only when the bandages were thick and secure around the wound, as close as he would ever come to being swaddled, did he remember the natural rate of breathing again.   
  
This was upsetting. Watching Cobra with hardened blue eyes, unblinking, listening with every intent. Fighting and wrestling, these things were his lifeblood—he did them as much out of joy as of anger, but he heard no such distinction now. The urge for complaint made his tongue thick in his mouth. But he swallowed it down. The same for jealousy, which he knew was his poison, in the same way a man knew too much beer would make his head split but carried on regardless. He was nodding all the same. “I will.” Coming out forced, hardly simple or easy. But if it was simple and easy, they wouldn’t be like this now.   
  
The guard stole his gaze, briefly, after that remark. He mulled choice words in his cheeks before looking back to his master above him. “I did not make a covenant with him,” he murmured. “You are my god, not him, but he makes to command me.” It was the simple act of ordering him to ‘ _ dress _ ’ when he’d wanted to be beautifully naked that had set Sigvard upon him. Not jealousy, not this time, not that Cobra would ever believe it. “Am I to let him humiliate me in this way—and will you allow it too, and not defend me?” His distaste was obvious, but so was his resolution; he would make some attempt to bear it, if he was asked to. Some small attempt. “Tell me. Do I follow him, too, and let him ridicule me as he likes? Him, and others. Do I take it all?”

 

COBRA -

 

"Good," Cobra narrowed his eyes. The babbling about taking orders from the guard, however, was less pleasing. He pressed a hand to the man's lips, silencing his outrage. "You forget yourself," he scolded. "This is the palace of Navan. Men cannot roam the streets naked without scandal. It was not unreasonable for Irfan to tell you to dress. I would have done so if he had not already had the pants in hand. He can be... abrasive... but so can you, and I expect you to get on better than you do now. Which is why I want you to fuck."   
  
The resulting cough caused Irfan's body to jolt forward. "What?!" he cried, coming around to kneel beside the pair, beseeching the shortest man. "You've never been a voyeur! What pleasure would you gain from this?"   
  
"It is to reduce  _ dis _ pleasure," Cobra answered sternly. "And you  _ will _ do it. Sigvard may be my follower but there are many debts that you owe me too, Irfan. You owe me your livelihood, I recall."    
  
The man grimaced, looking away and running his fingers through his short crop of hair. "He's a brute," he complained, tone a shade weaker.

"You won't harm each other because if you do, I will personally shove a handful of rotgut leaves down each of your throats," Cobra said as he  clambered off of the larger man. "So, get to it."   
  
Irfan, reluctant, hesitated as his hands moved towards the man's bound wrists. "What are your tastes?" he asked suspiciously, leaving him bound for the moment.

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

There was the suggestion, the  _ command _ , and a sudden and violent lurch of protest in Sigvard's guts. But he'd learned his lesson, temporarily, and so didn't put words to it. His blue eyes only went wide. His nostrils flared. He didn't imagine Irfan's objections would undo this madness, but he was at least grateful for the attempt. It was all a great shame, really. The Northlander would have found the scheme terribly funny, if only he weren't a victim in it.   
  
When the weight of Cobra was off of him, he launched himself to sit He eyed the slave a moment longer, then, letting silence hang in the absence of his answer to the guard. Waiting for him—to change his mind, or to involve himself, or to give him some strength for the ugly adventure ahead of him. But he would have nothing.   
  
Sig turned, then, to Irfan. He pushed his wrists at him with a grunt, indicating he ought to free them—for although the Northlander did  _ thoroughly _ enjoy the thrill of fighting against bindings in the frantic energy of a good fuck, he would find it much easier to warm up to a new body if he had his hands to use. And this way, too, he could touch himself if the guard couldn't manage to do it right. But then: He'd been a whore before, hadn't Cobra said? He thought to chide him. To tell him he ought to know, if he was any good at his job, how to suss out his  _ tastes _ . Instead, he held his tongue, with the vague impression that Cobra wouldn't tolerate any more pettiness between them.

"Let me see you, first." Any efforts to sound subdued were undone by the permanent gruffness in his voice. "Be rid of these things." His hands lifted to tug at the guard's pants; without the belt, it took little effort to peel the garment from him. With his grip, then, instead of his words, he instructed— _ asked _ —the man to turn this way and that, so that he could get a good look at him. There was a grunt. Unclear if it was displeasure or admiration. A little of both, really; he was a handsome creature, but in Sigvard's present state of mind, the sight of straps of muscle and taut flesh made him want one thing. "I would rather spar with you some more, I think," he murmured. But there was to be no wrestling. Fine, fine. Better to get on with it.   
  
There was some notion, at first, that he should put on a good show for his godling; to imagine what he wanted to see of him, if anything at all, and do that. Just as quickly, it occurred to him that he didn't have the faintest idea what Cobra might like to see—particularly if he wasn't in the habit of watching. So he wouldn't try. He'd take it for what it was, and pursue his own gratification, and nothing more. How odd to be the one being watched, though, after all that  _ watching _ in the hay and the dirt underneath the stands.   
  
He shook his head. Trying to put Cobra out of it. His hands lifted to grip the meat of Irfan's hips, all firm muscle rather than soft fat, and tug him towards him. He shifted forward, himself, and ducked his head to push his lips and the scratch of his beard to the inside of the dark thigh before him. "You've met lots of men like me, you said," he remarked. His hands carried on their adventure, now down the length of his legs. "So? Tell me. What are the tastes of men like me?"

  
  


COBRA -

 

The man remained frozen, for a moment, almost balking when the blond wasn't forthcoming about his sexual inclinations. "You are safe, Irfan," Cobra chimed in, draping himself across the cushions of his bed to enjoy the show. Whatever this was referring to, it seemed to soothe the man somewhat, and although a frown lingered on his face, he did free Sigvard's wrists from his bonds, standing upon his request and pressing his lips together tightly as his trousers were stripped. His skin was as rich and dark as Hamad's, though he was broader in hip and more muscular than his long-limbed Lord. Despite his former profession, he had no tattoos or body piercings to speak of; a few scars from small injuries, but nothing more. HIs cock, soft and uncut, failed to match Cobra's in length but outstripped him in girth.    
  
Talk of wrestling, again. "...Most do," he admitted with a grumble, a fair portion of his bravado stripped away along with his clothes.    
  
"No sparring!" Cobra snapped from the bed, straightening up from where he was propped on one elbow. "You will spar again when your shoulder is healed and not before!"

Irfan nodded his obedience in reply but his eyes were watching Sigvard like a hawk, the tension making his body taut as hands were upon him, pulling him closer. It had been over a year since he had been used at the whorehouse; since then, Cobra and Hamad were the only ones to call upon his services save for a smattering of other nobles at Hamad's discretion. But this one wasn't paying him, was he? Somewhat freed by that fact, he let his hands find a grip in the man's hair, spreading his feet a little wide as thigh muscles flexed under exploring hands.

"They want to feel strong," he answered, eyes still clouded with reservation no matter how openly he spoke. "That's why they fight. Some men find the feeling through fucking, others see getting fucked as an ultimate endurance. Some won't even do anything other that use my mouth." With a dry laugh, he tugged the man's face up to his navel, pulling his head back to look in his eyes. "You don't seem like one of the ones with a taste for terrible acts," he passed the judgement frankly, thick lips spreading into a grin. "Although you may still be a mad bastard."

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

This was better. The more the guard carried on with his soft words, soft hands, the more Sigvard could preoccupy himself with his body rather than his repellant personality. He rocked his head up into the hand in his hair, a wordless appreciation; and had intended to slip his tongue into the dip of his navel before he was instead made to meet those golden eyes of his. The grin was matched by a small twinge at the corners of Sig's own lips on hearing 'mad bastard.' Not  _ wholly _ repellant, maybe, after all.   
  
"Praise," he muttered, nodding. His hands had slipped away to fall into the space between Irfan's legs; there was the sound of his palms sweeping together, slow, round and round, warming one against the other. "I enjoy praise." And then, as originally intended, he turned his mouth to his stomach for an indulgent taste of him—his navel, and up along the valley between the hard muscles of his abdomen, and down again to the root of his cock. His own hadn't yet stirred.   
  
"I don't like to mix fighting with fucking," he mused, his lips turning chaste to trail kisses along the angle of the man's hip bone. "I don't screw to feel strong." It seemed to him a silly idea; the metaphor of sexual dominance was beyond his simplistic thinking, and he would much rather just fight to settle any matter of strength. There wasn't any doubt, that way. "I screw to feel good." His hands, warmed now to a feverish heat, came up to Irfan's back—to feel where his ribs started below his jutting shoulder blades, and down to his waist, and hips, and ass. He'd linger, there. Kneading into the supple flesh with a firm grip, he skirted his fingertips along the cleft between his cheeks.

Now, at last, there was a heat coming to him, flushing his skin. As he rocked his forehead into the guard's hip and took breath between his parted lips, he was unsure of his next move. He did wish to be holding Cobra instead. He gave some thought to wandering over and collecting him. But the slave wouldn't be in this distracting haze, like he was. He would likely be sober and put a swift end to it. So his lips roamed lower. Suckling, now, at the inside of the man's thigh. "I do prefer being fucked," he admitted, eager to get predilections out of the way so they could start and just as soon be done with it. "And you? What are your tastes, hm?"

 

COBRA -

 

He squirmed slightly, though not out of distaste, with the tongue dipping into his navel. A deep furrow carved the man's brow as he glanced back at Cobra. "He's strange," he announced, uncertain.   
  
"He is," came the serene reply laced with a smirk, for Cobra was enjoying the show with one of his arms hanging off the side of the bed, head lolling to one side. "You'll like it."   
  
"We don't... hrm," Irfan faltered, for even the slang sounded strange and thick on his tongue. He cast aside the word 'screw' in favour of his common term. "Fuck in this way, the Navanese. It is often political or a matter of social standing, like the slaves." Like a lot of things, not that SIgvard would understand the finer nuances of Navanese masculinity in his current state or perhaps any state at all. Humming in the back of his throat, the man's body shifted under the warm touch which inspired his back to arch. A wish crossed his mind, to pull the man's lips apart with his thumbs and feed him his half-hard prick, feel the soft heat of his mouth, but that wasn't what he said he wanted.    
  
Nodding, mouth slack, he stopped over to cup the man's jaw in his hands instead, gaze distracted by the glint of a small vial sent rolling towards them across the stone floor. Oil. Cobra's twinkling blue eyes smiled back at his from the bed. He hesitated, feeling the beat where one might have taken the blond's mouth in a kiss coming and going, before he shifted his weight to kneel in front of the man.

"I've never been afforded tastes," he chuckled. "I did as I was told. But I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy some of it." With a grin, he ducked underneath the man's arm and reached for the vial, just snagging it with outstretched fingertips. Rising up, he popped the cap and sniffed it over the man's shoulder. Orangeblossom; no menthol, so no heat to it. Better that way, in his opinion, He tipped some onto the palm of his hand and capped the bottle again, spreading it over his palms before he leaned back and squeezed the junction of the man's neck and shoulders, pressing his thumbs deep into the muscle to find the tension. On one side only, his slick hands glided down to the collar bone and around the joint, mindful of the bit on the other side. Another time. He continued the massage on his chest instead, one of the least stressful of his services.    
  
"Has Cobra fucked you yet?" he asked curiously, lifting his gaze from the stiffening nubs under his thumbs and looking to Sig's face. "Did you take the studs well? I nearly bit through the sheets, the first time."

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard’s body seemed to have forgotten, by now, that oils and touch could be delightful without an equal measure of pain. He braced himself for a sting when Irfan’s hands came against his skin. When there wasn’t one, he expected a slow burn to sneak up on him—and when that, too, failed to manifest, he found himself staring dumbly at the dark and glistening fingertips working at his pale flesh. He was mesmerized. He swayed, relaxing, and his own wandering hands seemed to briefly forget what they were doing.   
  
His gaze lifted at the question, but it seemed to take another moment for him to parse it. When he did, his jaw set.   
  
It was as easy and reflexive to imagine it as it was repulsive: Cobra’s body working furiously above this ungrateful thing before him, stuffing him full with that ornamented prick. He didn’t much understand it, either: If these savages fucked for social standing and such things, why were two men of low status caught up together? That Hamad or a dignitary might have made them perform didn't occur to him. There was just the idea that they weren’t obligated, that it was only for the  _ pleasure _ of each other; and it made his guts go chilly. But—jealousy, jealousy. It was exactly this that was forbidden.

So he let his tension go slack. It was easier to forget his vexation when there were those hands on him, paying him such close attention. And his godling’s praise, too, still making his skin prickle with heat. “He has,” he nodded. His body moved closer, on his knees, complicating Irfan’s massaging; but he wanted to feel the knock of his stiffening prick against his own. As his hands settled in the man’s waist again, his gaze fled briefly to Cobra. It seemed unnatural that he was so far away. “He did say I took it well.”   
  
The Northlander lifted a hand to take Irfan’s wrist, firm enough to hold it, gentle enough to quietly promise he wasn’t about to fight him. His other hand came to it, palm against palm, fingers mingling with fingers—stealing some of that oil for himself. Releasing him, he swept his palms together again. Blue eyes held golden ones, and he dropped both hands to the fronts of the guard’s thighs. His grip worked lazily inwards and upwards to the softest parts of him.   
  
“It won’t be a good fuck if you don’t enjoy it,” he rumbled quietly. An open hand came up to sweep Irfan’s heavy balls, and along his shaft with a gentle tug that was too light and imprecise to be anything more than teasing. “I want it to be a good fuck—you’ll be afforded tastes with me." Another stroke. Cradling his ballsack with his other hand, he pushed his thick fingers over the flesh of his taint. "Tell me. What is it you like?”

 

COBRA -

 

The ridge under his heavy pecs. The broad expanse of padded muscle that was his stomach, the inviting handholds of his sides. Soon Sigvard's pale skin began to shine with oil, tinged pink in places where he had caught the morning sun. Irfan breathed deeply, literally inspired by the sight, stopping himself short from leaning forward to sink his teeth into the unmarred skin on his other shoulder. To mimic the wound, even in play, might grate upon the other's temper. He kiss his neck instead, pushing his chin into the crook with soft, pleased noise at the back of his throat as hands drifted south. He spread his legs wider, inviting but receiving only ghosts of touches that made him squirm in return.   
  
"I like... to cum," he said inanely, not used to putting it into words. Thumbs played over the man's chest again, teeth worrying his lip as he gazed back at Cobra with his own brand of envy. "And..."    
  
"His chest," Cobra offered deviously, sinking further back into the cushions. WIth his arms stretched behind his head, the bumps of his nipple piercings showed easily through the band of fabric around his chest. Irfan had expressed his thoughts about them before, but the healing time had been off-putting for a man trained into a whore's libido.

Irfan nodded with a guilty grin, glancing down at his cock which twitched as it rose to hardness. His nipple were faster to give away his interest, dark and puffy on his thick pecs with twin stiff nubs pointing slightly downwards.  "But I like to fuck," he reassured the man, reaching for the vial again to coat his fingers. "I am good at finding a man's weakness. His, uh...." He trailed off with a vague gesture, only knowing the word for 'prostate' in Navan's native tongue.Hands slipping down to knead at and spread the man's ass, a rivulet of oil slipped from his fingers and followed the curve of his cheek down to his asshole. Teasing fingers were soon to follow, tracing the puckered skin before working in to the first knuckle.  "You'll see."

 

SIGVARD -

 

This was familiar to Sigvard: A whore’s touch. Practiced and patient and unselfish, Irfan’s hands and mouth were singing devotion to his body; and he, in turn, was coming apart beneath them. His skin was hotter and hotter. He couldn’t breathe if it wasn’t over his own tongue, which was complicated, because his lips were searching the man’s skin in blind kisses. His stroking hand grew greedy, collecting both of their cocks to frot together messily in the space between them. This was familiar, yes. And so different from Cobra’s violent eroticism, the frenetic fucking they’d been engaged in for days on end. He didn’t fully know what to do with gentleness and adoration.   
  
The blond’s dense head made to move in Cobra’s direction when he uttered the answer—the instruction, maybe—but he couldn’t fully pull himself away from the heat and the shadow of the guard’s body. He nodded. His chest. Sig rather enjoyed something like that, too. He remembered the slave had humiliated him for it.   
  
He was beginning to realize, begrudgingly, that he didn’t altogether dislike Irfan. He’d thought at first that that sneer on the guard’s face was permanent; that if he didn’t act swiftly to crush him under his thumb, he’d have to put up with the ridiculous bastard shouting orders at him, or insulting him, or some horrible combination of the two, for days and days and days. But he was subdued, like this. And very, very generous. He wondered if his godling really ought to be more like this, or if it was himself that was the problem.

Sufficiently drunk with pleasure, he didn’t realize the second meaning to ‘weakness;’ but he understood a finger up his ass quite well.   
  
His hands fled from where they’d been stroking their turgid cocks, instead to his hips; to brace himself, as he leaned into the guard’s welcoming body with his own. Their chests together. His lips falling to Irfan’s shoulder, parting, murmuring nonsense, little gratitudes in his native tongue. To his neck, then. Suckling purple-red marks to the surface of his dark skin. Pushing and pulling himself tighter against him, rolling his hips to offer up more of his ass. His teeth caught his lobe, and his tongue ran wide across the shell of his ear.   
  
A grin of wild delight peeled across the Northlander’s lips. His chest. There was no leaving it, now, especially since deciding he didn’t hate him. Even if it meant losing that worming finger for awhile.   
  
So he lifted his thick arms to circle ‘round Irfan’s body and tighten, and with considerable effort heaved to lift him a ways off the ground; he could shuffle towards the bed this way, and drop the guard among the cushions such that his head fell not too far from Cobra’s stomach. Immediately, of course, he was over him. Nosing into the underside of his jaw, to kiss the front of his throat; to track his lips and tongue and nipping teeth down and down and down to the thick muscle of his chest. His hand pawed roughly at the swell of his pectoral, his thumb raking over his hardened nipple in purposeful attention and neglect, and again. His mouth closed over the other. Suckling like a baby at a tit , a low noise of satisfaction burrowing up from his chest.   
  
He was feeling the reaction of the body beneath him, curious: Was it his hot and gentle mouth that got a rise in him, or the pinch and twist of his abruptly cruel finger and thumb at the other side of him?

 

COBRA -

 

Irfan seemed to have an easier time of warming up to the man, if only because his initial impression had not been disgust, but simply doubt. Doubt still could fester, depending on how often the man took to getting himself so intoxicated that he'd violently defend public nudism, but for the meantime it was easily to fall into old habits and let his body move in harmony with the bare skin before him. Though he and Cobra shared many things in common, they had their differences, too, as lovers. Irfan spoke less, for one, lips occupied with an indulgent grin and the occasional moan. He also lacked the fury, the spite that made Cobra so much like his vicious namesake. His time at the whorehouse had affected him differently to Cobra's time at the circus.   
  
"W-wait--" Eyes widening, Irfan swore as the man suddenly scooped him up, fingers pulling from his ass involuntarily with the movement. Finding himself deposited close to his friend, he reached for him, only to receive the soft sole of a foot to the face as Cobra pushed his body back and away from the pair. Cobra scoffed as a mischievous tongue lapped his arch before the foot was pulled away.    
  
"I am not as jealous as you, Sigvard," he reminded the man with a drawl, leaning back with his head in his hand. His lips spread in a grin to mimic the Northlander's as he moved to the guard's chest, all too familiar with the  _ yip _ that pealed from Irfan's throat. The effect was immediate; quivering and gasping with delight, the man grabbed the blond's head and pushed his chest up into the attentions, eyes squeezing closed as he moaned. His cock bounced against his thigh, hard and heavy, quickly encircled up by one of Irfan's hands as he sought out both lengths to pick up where the other man left off.

The sharp pinch earned another cry, a pleading palm cupping the side of SIg's face. "They'll bruise," he murmured, eyes hazy.    
  
"You don't wear shirts anyway," Cobra chimed in, objective enough to understand what the man was talking about.    
  
The guard only shook his head. "Gentler," he insisted. "And..." Grunting quietly, he pushed at Sig's outer thigh with one foot in an effort to get him to roll over.

 

SIGVARD -

 

Gentler. Fine, fine. Looping his arms under Irfan’s arching spine, pulling him up against himself, Sigvard kept his lips locked against the erect little nib, sucking, rolling the pad of his tongue against it; parting, he let him feel his hot breath, and the flick of his tongue’s stiffened tip. He wasn’t acknowledging the imperative to turn over, yet. Too busy finding his other abused nipple with wandering kisses across his chest, and pushing his lips to it as if in apology. And then taking it, too, into the wet heat of his mouth. He wanted them swollen. A hand finding the other, pushing his thumb round and round it in the slickness of his spit left behind. Swollen, yes, and raw, so that the brush of their bodies might make him quiver like he was quivering now.   
  
At last, he snaked his grip about that dark waist once more and held him tightly, and rolled with all his effort until he was on his back among the cushions beneath Irfan’s full weight. Releasing the man, his greedy hands seized his hips immediately. Tugging at them, and his ass, and the thick of his thighs. He rolled his head back into the bed, arching his neck—doing everything to display his own wide chest that had captured the guard’s fascination earlier. That grin still licking at his lips as he peered through smiling eyes to Cobra. ”I didn’t think you were jealous,” he murmured. “I want to taste you.” A faint hope.   
  
His gaze back on Irfan again; blue eyes dancing at the prospect of having his weakness found. Hands lifted to come down again on the man’s flesh with a gentle  _ smack _ , more appraising than painful. “Pretty thing. Give me more of that lovely praise.”

 

COBRA -

 

Air left Irfan's lips in kisses and moans, cupping the man's head to his chest with needy, wordless encouragement. His other hand pumped their turgid cocks with a great effort to keep his pace languid, to keep the drip of precum from the tip of his prick a drip and nothing more before he fucked the man. Not that he'd been cooperating; grunting, he realised with a frown that the oil was back on the floor where they'd left it. Torn between wondering whether the man's ass was slick enough and seeing stars as his sensitive tits were sucked and pinched to swollen, Irfan let out quiet, husky pleading in Navanese. He'd always been rusty at Common tongue, except when it came to insults.    
  
"I'll cum," he warned finally, the statement apparently intended to serve as a compliment. "Let me fuck you, Sigvard. I can do it face to face... please..." The compliment 'pretty' earned a giddy smile. It felt odd but pleasing to hear; as far as his homeland's standards went, the guard's strength and endowment were valued much more than his face.    
  
Cobra smirked, watching. The studded length between his legs, hidden behind khaki silk, twitched in interest but not enough to make him hard. It was true that he was not a voyeur; the idea of stroking himself off while watching others grating on his own sense of dignity.  That wasn't to say it was unpleasant, though. Teasing Sigvard was a reward within itself. "You will, eventually," he said airily. "I'm inclined to make you beg before you taste me again. Or perhaps not." His eyes twinkled. "Your throat is inviting."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Low and gravelly laughter bubbled up from Sigvard like a babe's would; he was delighted like this, his broad back against the cushions, the rest of him all slippery and warm, his cock in the grip of a tight and practised fist. Truthfully, he might have given up soldiering for whoring—if only it didn't require being beholden to someone  _ else's _ whims. Not that he seemed to mind being beholden to Cobra's, much.   
  
His hands slipped under Irfan's thighs and made to nudge him up and away, signalling that he was quite finished being a greedy shit at his dark tits and would now  _ deign _ to let the man fuck him. Pale fingers came to his own chest, kneading idly at the mass of oily muscle. As his knees bent, thick thighs coming up to his stomach to give the guard a glimpse of his puckering hole, his eyes went again to the slave.

Not to immediately his face. Glassy eyes walked the length of him: The structure of his feet, and the length of his legs. He should have been seizing those hips, he thought; tugging them towards him so that he could push his face into the faint shape of his godling's prick underneath that garment. Now that he saw the way the shirt band framed his naked stomach, he wanted to use his mouth to paint bruises on it. And to attack those studded nipples, even through fabric.   
  
His eyes, then, at last his blue eyes, and the thick lashes that framed them. The Northlander's smile pricked wider, putting roundness to his cheeks. "You ought to make me beg," he breathed, husky. A foot was pushing against Irfan's chest mindlessly, as if his body couldn't be close to another without wanting to wrestle it. "Make me beg; make me beg, I beg of you." Giggling, now, at the absurdity of himself. If the womb didn't feel like this, it ought to. His hands spread to grab cushions and pull them against his own body, just to touch them. "Wouldn't you like to hear how much I crave your cock down my throat, hm?" A plaintive look. "It's been days, Cobra—long days. And didn't I do well?"

  
  


COBRA -

 

Nimble fingers plucked slowly at one of the side ties to his green silk trousers, watching the way the blond stared with a knowing smirk. The bow pulled loose, allowing enough slack to slide his hand under, along his hip, over his prick with an indulgent part of lips. Arching his back to reposition his legs under himself, kneeling, Cobra's smile bloomed into a wicked grin with the show. Never much of a voyeur, no, but he was well experienced in being an exhibition.    
  
With a faint grunt of complain that was spurred on by his turgid cock, Irfan grimaced and hauled the man back towards the edge of the bed, the silk sheets helping to reduce the friction for such a weight. Not wanting o be ignored, it seemed, Irfan spat on the oiled pucker and lined up his cock, shoving in an inch to interrupt the Northlander's pleading with any kind of sound. Grunting, lamenting the oil laid out on the floor, he pushed his hips forward, the act of impaling Sigvard slow and tight indeed.    
  
"I instructed you to fuck," Cobra said silkily, eye still twinkling as he used his other hand to steady the base of his dick, holding it like a prize out of reach as his fingers circled the head. The pants hung askew off his tanned hips, held in place by the spread of his thick thighs. "You need to convince me you'll play nicely with others before you are rewarded."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Goosebumps ripped over the Northlander's skin, and he felt his nipples stiffen against empty air. His eyes, watching Cobra toy with himself, held painful want. But his parting lips couldn't do much more than breathe, and even barely that, as Irfan tugged at him and stuffed him full.   
  
There was a crudeness to him that was unexpected. He'd been so gentle, before, in his whorish attentions; he'd wailed so beautifully with Sig's mouth on his chest. And now he moved with a force that did nothing but heap fuel onto the pale giant's writhing, gasping lust. Gods, he wanted to have him on the floor, to test his strength, to become a tangled mess of grappling, humping bodies. But he mustn't fight. He must remember this.   
  
If he wasn't to have a cock in his mouth, he was determined to fill it with something other than his stupid tongue. So he pushed himself to his elbows. And fell back quite immediately, as the full girth of Irfan's prick rocked finally against his prostate and made his singular fixation more and  _ more _ of that perfect pleasure. He cooed approval, and knitted his fingers in his own hair, and rolled his hips to try and fuck himself on the guard's cock. Delighting in the feeling of those wide hips coming flush against his ass.

But his damned empty  _ mouth _ . Up, up on his elbows again. And then on his palms, gripping silk, so that he could hook one arm around the man's neck and use his own weight as he fell back to tug Irfan along with him. Chasing his lips with wolfish, biting teeth. A hand lifted to open against his throat—then sank down, down, to grope messily at his chest, and roll his pretty, swollen nipple between forefinger and thumb.   
  
"Slow," he directed. Contradicting his own feverish molestations. "I want to feel you."

 

COBRA -

 

Irfan didn't have any other choice than slow; Sig's ass had enough oil to allow a merciful entry but the slickness was too miserly for any frantic fucking right off the bat. With a pleading whine, the guard grit his teeth, broad hips bucking against the pale skin they already pressed flush with, as if that might shove his thick cock deeper still. His breath came in cautious gasps as he slowly withdrew, lasting and inch or so before he couldn't resist the temptation to drive back in. The result was a slow, tantric grinding, the way gradually eased by practice and his own pre.    
  
The guard grunted in surprised as a thick arm came around his neck, dragging him forward into a gnash of teeth and tongue. The act felt unfamiliar; Hamad was a queer exception when it came to Navanese nobles kissing whores, but it was not unwelcome. The attentions to his tits, however, had him huffing and squirming as he rocked his hips into the delicious heat of the man's ass.    
  
Cobra was quick to act, hand coming forward to seize the offending wrists and drag them back, pinning the pale man to the bed with his hands under his knees. "Cheating," he let the accusation drip from his lips, using one hand to press his cock flush against his taut stomach so he was able to look down at Sig from his position. "If you want him slow, you'll leave him alone. He shoots too quickly, otherwise."   
  
The guard, making a faint sound of agreement, dipped his head to latch onto the blond's  chest in kind.

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard’s face was knitted up in sudden panic—he didn’t think he’d end up bound, not  _ now _ , not when he thought he was doing so well; and he made an earnest attempt at getting his hands out from under his godling before it occurred to him he might be punished wickedly for it.   
  
So he fell limp. Ice-blue eyes flashed over the ladder of studs decorating Cobra’s prick, then watched Irfan’s head in maddening impotence as he suckled at the Northlander’s chest and drew a mess of mewling noises out of him. He was bewitched by the sight of his broad and handsome shoulders, straps of muscle working underneath tanned and slickened skin, the arch of his body as he drove his cock luxuriously into Sig’s tight and greedy hole. “ _ Gods, _ ” he breathed. And then gasped, and then held it, as if the guard’s mouth might abandon him if he let go.

The remark, ‘ _ he shoots too quickly _ ,’ the easy intimacy with which Cobra spoke about the man, should have made jealousy burn in him. Would have, minutes ago. Evidently, being treated to a pretty southerner at each end was how such pettiness was bred out of him.   
  
He’d held his breath too long. Heaving, he pinched his eyes closed, and made some attempt with his wandering mouth to bite at his own arm, or something,  _ something _ , anything to release the tension of mounting pleasure driven into him by the guard’s rutting body. His legs hooked ‘round Irfan’s waist, calves coming to the backs of his hips to urge him on. He was feverish. Every other drag of that cockhead against his walls, his so-called ‘weakness,’ prompting a bubbling of moans and delirious praise that made his pleasure obvious. He tried to milk him—tried to constrict his cunt around his girth to draw him in and make his tightness unbearable. But he lacked the coordination, and Irfan was massive enough without the help, and so he only ended up a squirming mess.   
  
“Please.” His eyes were trying to find the slave in the scene around him. “Cobra—please, please, let me taste you.” Like starved infant. Or a greedy one. His hands tried to wriggle free again. He wanted to sing him devotions; he wanted to show him how well he was doing with his little contest. “Let me. Fill me up.”

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra emitted a deep chuckle at the man's struggles, knowing how much he liked to touch with his hands. The blond was smart to surrender, however; the punishment for defiance would be far worse than idle hands. Irfan's body, pinned roughly by the bigger man's heels, humped desperately hot orifice beneath it with guttoral groans resounding in his throat. Teeth joined his lips and tongue on the man's nipple, switching to the other to give it the same puffy swell as its twin. The act ground his own tits up against the man's firm gut, which only made his hips buck harder in their relentless grinding.    
  
In contrast to the brutality, Cobra was gentle, smirking as fingertips trailed down from the furry hollow of the blond's armpits, over sculpted muscle, flirting with delicate inside of the other's elbow as he slid back with the sound of silk on silk. Sigvard's hands were freed for a moment before Cobra's grazed the length of his forwards and grasped them with his own. Fabled cock safely out of reach, he bent over and gave the man a taste of a different part of him, lips smiling above for another teasing moment before he dipped into the kiss. Like the fucking, it was slow, luxuriant; a meeting of tongues with little chance to take a breath until he deigned to lift his head for a gasp.    
  
Irfan straightened up out of necessity, fingers gripping hips roughly as he managed to stroke into the man with the full length of his prick save the tip. "Close," he keening, eyes barely focused. "G-gods..."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Far beyond words, Sigvard was left to voice his unhappy surprise in a plaintive whimper—at Irfan’s warning, yes, but much more so at the sudden departure of Cobra’s lips. He had only a second to make the choice: To bark at the guard to hold himself back for a few more decadent minutes, or to close his eyes and drown himself in the electric thrill that thrummed in the core of him and made its way out to every inch of skin, to indulge blindingly and completely and to race the bastard to orgasm. Only wasn’t a choice at all, really. He was mad with pleasure, and the only cure he saw now was more and more of it, and as quickly as possible.   
  
His grip tightened painfully around Cobra’s arms, holding him close and seeming to want him  _ closer _ , still; with this and his arching spine, his clamping legs over Irfan’s hips, his body seemed to be stretching itself taut between the men. He was begging. Desperate, frantic, whispering  _ “please” _ over and over until he was breathless,  _ “again, ” _ again, again, he only wanted that kiss again, sounding more and more like he couldn’t possibly imagine life without having it. He wanted to hold Cobra’s lips in his own. To taste and suck his tongue. To be joined to him in whatever clumsy way he could manage.

It hit him like the flat of a sword to the head. Climax; a whole-body shock that had him shaking, pushing shivering breaths through his nose as his mouth refused to give up on that damned kiss. There was the thin heat of cum on his chest. Rope after rope pumped into emptiness by his surging and tightening balls, fucked out of him by the prick still rocking into his tight heat and now fighting against the fierce clenching and twitching that pulled Irfan in and threatened to keep him buried to the hilt until he saw fit to let him go. He wished he could tell Cobra how heavenly it felt. Gods, he wished he could  _ show _ him, and it crossed his mind to ask the slave to nestle into his lap, there, while Sig was still hard enough to fuck him. Nevermind the unbearable sensitivity. He would do it, biting his tongue, for his little god.   
  
Maybe he said it well enough in the way he sank into the bed. The rapid rise and fall of his chest, backed by faint moans that begged mercy, and the heavy slide of his legs away from Irfan’s hips. His fingers ached from his tight grip; he freed and flexed them, now. One lifted to touch Cobra’s face in tired delirium, and the other sought out the guard’s hand at his hip to tug it up, and hopefully him along with it. He was wondering if all three of them might share a little of that kiss.

 

COBRA -

 

The words took a long moment to register in Cobra's mind, looking down and regarding the blond man like a bird might regard an insect. Lips curved in a smile, allowing him to struggle for a moment longer before he finally dipped his head again, stealing the air from his cries as his boy convulsed. Tongues melded, throats hummed; Irfan's deep, erotic cries filled the bedchamber as he the climax he'd been so determined to stave off finally washed over him. Heavy hips slamming up against Sig's pale rump, he convulsed and thrusted feebly as his cock painted the man's insides white and hot. He grew oddly silent throughout his climax, grimacing, riding some tantric daze unbeknownst to his bedmates. When he fell forward, balls drained and weak as a puppy, he could only look on with a slack jaw as Sigvard coaxed him forward. Kissing did not come so naturally to the Navanese.    
  
"You are strange, like Hamad," he murmured, breathless.    
  
Licking his lips, Cobra lifted his head with a smirk. "You have besmirched me, Sigvard," he teased, referring to a thin rope of cum that had managed to find its way to the slave's hairline while his head was bent for the kiss. Irfan let out a huff out laughter as he saw it, reaching out to collect the morsel on his finger, letting more of his weight relax on the man's cum-slick belly as he placed the finger in Sig's mouth.    
  
"How filthy you are," Cobra drawled, not terribly unkindly, as he sat back and pushed his swollen cock back beneath the green silk, fastening the tie at his hip. He seemed smug in his cleanliness, eyeing the mens' chests with a smirk. "But at least you are better behaved." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Even as Sigvard's pale arms tumbled around Irfan's shoulders in a loose embrace, even as he accepted that cum-slicked finger with  _ otherworldly _ delight, he was watching Cobra with a curiousness, an awe. Like there was something new about him. Something holy. Nevermind out there on the balcony where he'd crushed his throat and brought him visions of something that might have been the afterlife; the luxurious fuck under the slave's careful watch had apparently been the thing to leave an impression. The cleanliness, yes, and his restraint, and finally that kiss.   
  
His eyes, eventually, moved to Irfan's head. Curling his arms tighter—not that he had much strength to, after the morning's events—he pawed at his dark hair in a clumsy attempt at petting. Some distant part of him was thinking they ought to wash up quickly, remembering Cobra's aversion to the smell of fucking, but the fact that the last thing he wanted to do was  _ move _ complicated matters severely. He nodded quietly, after long moments since the slave had made his observation. It was easy to think his poisonous envy had been flushed out of him. Time would tell.   
  
"Will you come with us?" He murmured lowly in the guard's direction. "Through the desert."

 

COBRA -

 

His erection would leave in time. He didn't... feel... much like participating. These moods of his were rarely entertained under the ownership of Hamad, but his brand was struck now. In his devious mission he was afforded a rare sense of agency that made him feel powerful. He was sure it would fade once the novelty wore off. Half sure. As sure as he was that the thoughts of blood would leave in time. Cobra had seen the aftermath of too many battles in vivid detail as of late.    
  
_ Are you coming? _   
  
He closed his eyes hard. Irfan's presence was convenient.   
  
"Of course," the guard said with a smile. "Hamad ordered it."    
  
Half convenient. Cobra's eyes snapped open again, quick to draw the conclusion. "He thinks Sigvard will die."    
  
"He does," Irfan agreed, nodding again. He was not one for tact or subtlety, especially in the wake of a fuck. "I am to keep you alive if you are otherwise unguarded. You may not need me, though, who knows," he shrugged, rolling over onto his back with an indulgent sigh. "You seem a strong fighter, Sigvard." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander didn't seem altogether perturbed by the news; Hamad barely knew him, after all, and so he would not begrudge the Duke his silly ignorance. If he grimaced, it was only because he was chilly, now. In time, he mustered the strength to sit up, and then stand, and waddle bow-legged to the washbasin.   
  
He took a cloth and soaked it, and first set about the task of cleaning Irfan's load from between his legs and the crack of his thick ass. "I am," he muttered, in agreement with the guard. "And I know you—" After dipping the cloth to rinse it again, he wagged it in the direction of Cobra. "You think I don't pick my fights, you think I'm reckless, but I knew I had this one." Finished with the bulk of the mess, he swept the cloth over his chest, and jaw, and arms where they'd been spattered with his own seed. "I knew it before I was on him." Again, he rinsed the cloth, and wrung it out. "More likely than not, anyway."   
  
There was still a little complication in his gait as he made his way to the bed again, cloth in hand. "I won't die, I don't think." One heavy thud, and then another, as he sank onto his knees to straddle Irfan's hips. Eyeing him: "But you're a good match for me." Opening the rag between his fingers, he laid it on the man's chest and dragged it over with the slow press of his palm—ostensibly  _ cleaning _ him, but seeming to take special care about his nipples and the swell of his pectoral. "Hamad has had you all this time; why not have the both of you do this, this king-killing, long before now?" As he swept the cloth down to his abdomen, empty fingertips of the other hand followed. "Is it such an advantage in the capital to be a—a, what is it, not-a-mirror?" Reaching, helplessly, for ' _ nadameer _ .' "What is it, to be this thing? Is it so rare?"

 

COBRA -

 

Content as a cat, Cobra curled up on the silk cushions and watched with heavy eyelids as the bigger man set about washing himself, then Irfan. Not exactly pure, but clean enough for him to tolerate their company without casting them out to the baths. After a second thought, aware of how  _ hungry _ he suddenly was, he stretched his back before taking up a new place by the low table, chewing bread and watching the men out of the corner of his eye.   
  
"A  _ nadameer _ ?" Irfan repeated with some bemusement, not expecting Sigvard to know the term at all, even if he was one. " _ Nadameer _ are wanderers and outcasts. They don't have a legal name nor swear fealty to a crown. It makes them useful to men like Hamad; crimes committed by a  _ nadameer _ are almost impossible to trace back to their masters. But it is not a good life," he reasoned, casting a wary eye in Cobra's direction. "There are twice as many beggars as there are mercenaries and spies. Many of them enter slave agreements to put food in their bellies."   
  
The sound of Cobra's teeth crunching an apple filled the room. He chewed roughly before he swallowed, freeing his mouth to speak. "The Navanese consider all tribespeople to be  _ nadameer _ ," he said snidely. "Even the Urdai, who were here long before they came to the shores. But being a  _ nadameer _ alone is not enough to make a fitting Kingslayer.  Finding a strong one, a soldier... there hasn't been one like that before you in Hamad's household."

 

SIGVARD -

 

It took a long moment of contemplation for Sigvard to wrap his head around the explanation; and even then it wasn't clear whether he did or gave up trying, for he was giggling, giddy, as if pretending to have understood some joke. "You're snakes, all of you," he remarked. Bundling the rag in his palms, he tossed it in the direction of the basin, where it hit the stone wall with a wet  _ smack _ and fell to the floor. "Your political fucking and your nameless thralls." It was a wonder the savages kept anything straight, he thought, with their heads so far up their own asses.   
  
With a grunt, he was on his feet and away from the pretty guard among the cushions. Wandering to where his godling sat, he stood behind him and bent—skimming his fingertips up along his ribs, and putting his nose among the dark curl of his hair to smell him. "You were rationing, I thought," he murmured in distracted observation. Heavy hands fell to the nape of his neck, and worked some warmth into it with blunt fingers. "Does this creature, this Irfan, know of your ambition?" His rumbling voice wasn't particularly  _ subtle _ , nor was the way he watched the guard from his position. "He is not your disciple."

 

COBRA -

 

Irfan clicked his tongue at the accusation, and it would be a lie if he claimed that part of his offense was not rootly in the knowledge that he himself was not a  _ nadameer _ and therefore not technically a part of any underhanded dealings that Cobra and his new Northern pledge intended to carry out. "I like you better with your ass full," he sniped, flopping back onto the pillows with a sigh. Rarely did guarding afford him such entertainment and comforts.    
  
Sigvard's scolding did nothing to slow the pace at which Cobra savaged the apple in his hand right down to the core. As he reached for sweet-spiced meats from the platter with the hunger still snarling in his belly, the look he gave Sigvard was positively besmirched in contempt. "I will eat this or I will take another bite out of you and eat that," he growled, swallowing the slice of meat whole.    
  
"Cobra is the only Urdai I wish to tie myself up in," Irfan's drawl sounded from the bed. "I've seen the brutes wield their spears well enough to take down five soldiers for every savage. They are angry like wild dogs yet as organised as wolves. I told him; any prophecy, and suspicions that he might be this 'Keht' figure, it would be a kindness to leave me out of it."

 

SIGVARD -

 

In spite of Cobra’s biting words, or rather because of them, Sigvard dropped lazily to take up a place behind him; his ass on the hard floor, his legs spread to either side of the southerner’s body, his arms looped around his waist. Sitting this close, the way he perked up hearing ‘ _ five soldiers for every savage _ ’ was obvious. Good opponents, then. Granted, he wasn’t to fight them—a damned shame. But he could fight alongside them, at least, or spar, or such things.   
  
It was better not to press the subject further, as he didn’t know how much the guard knew of the whole scheme. So his eyes peeled, eventually, back to his little master. To his naked shoulder, where his lips followed to give an offering of a soft kiss. He wondered what drove Cobra to tell Irfan these things; he wondered if he’d asked the man for some sort of help and was denied it. His calloused fingers lifted to the sides of his body, beneath that shirt band, and worked their way in quiet reverence along the lines of his ribs, and over his stomach. Drawing invisible shapes on his skin again. A pair of tits for him, and a massive cock.   
  
“You owe him some debt,” he mumbled, “is that right?” Speaking to Irfan, evidently, although his mouth was wandering up Cobra’s neck to kiss and suck at him. “Your livelihood, he said. How did a slave manage to win you that?”

 

COBRA -

 

As long as the man didn't interrupt his mean, his caresses were tolerated. By the time Cobra was done, all manner of meat was cleared from the plate. With a deep breath through his nose, he licked his lips and twisted round to face the larger man, cupping his face in his hands with an unsettling gleam in his eyes. However cool and aloof he had been before on the bed, it seemed that his meal has brought back his interest in the blond's body. Straddling his thick hips, he dipped his head tongued the sweet spot just below the man's ear in a mockery of more eating.   
  
On the bed, Irfan propped himself up on his elbows, lying on his stomach with a prime seat for spectating. Even if he did find the behaviour odd, Cobra had been unpredictable before. The Northlander's question, however, raised his guard somewhat. "We have... shared some hardships," he said evasively.   
  
"We have witnessed atrocities," Cobra piped up in a husky purr, pressing his chest against Sigvard's as hands and nose roamed his platinum hair. "We punished the men who imbibed in it."   
  
"I prefer not to speak of it," Irfan grimaced, sinking further into the cushion beneath him. "The underbelly of Navanese brothels is a terrible place. The men, they take their shows of wealth too far. I am glad Cobra helped me to secure a position as a guard."    
  
"I am glad we weeded out the worst of it." Cobra grinned and returned to Sigvard's neck, the other side now. Fingers dragged down his back and made firm handholds of his shoulder blades, keeping him close. 

 

SIGVARD -

 

It was difficult to concentrate. Both on the story, and so too on breakfast—his sampling of a fistful, earlier, was hardly enough, and so he thought he might sneak an arm around Cobra's body and pluck up a lump of goat cheese, or some olives, or a bit of bread. But his hands couldn't leave him. Settling into the crook of his waist, they gripped tight when he first felt that wandering mouth; a thin noise of surprise and delight coming out of him. He didn't mind being obvious. Any inhibitions he had regarding Irfan seeing weakness in him had been thoroughly abandoned when the man had stuffed him full.   
  
Atrocities, they were saying. He tried to focus, even as his thick fingers pushed into the backs of Cobra's hips, and slipped past the hem of his pants, and spread wide over his full ass to then seize fistfuls of it. Atrocities, atrocities. Men with money—was it like the circus, then, or worse? His embrace moved up again, to pull him closer, to put his hands beneath his thighs and tug him further up into his lap. He couldn't make sense of it. They punished the men, and then...? But it was clear the guard wanted to say none of it. And he'd learned, by now, that the southerners didn't seem to go along with force.   
  
One hand lifted to the hair at the back of Cobra's head, and sank his fingers among it, knitting it in his tight fist to keep him still. His mouth was at his ear, then, sweeping his fat tongue along the shell of it. His cock throbbed, but it was no use. He would devote himself to the slave's pleasure, then. The grip that held him as a leash didn't quit; his free hand opened wide against the flat of his stomach, and crept up and up to push messily at his shirt band. As if he wanted him free of it, but couldn't work out how to do it. Not wholly wrong. No matter. He slipped between fabric and skin instead, and rolled the stud of his piercing between thumb and forefinger.

Parting, his eyes were glassy and smiling. Hardly matching the earlier mischief in Cobra's gaze, or even  _ noticing _ it. "You are a loving god, then," he remarked. All that about destruction and fire, but look at what he'd done. A smile flashed the Northlander's teeth, before they chased the slave's lips to bite at instead.

 

COBRA -

 

Like Cobra, Irfan was not exactly a voyeur, either, but he made a better go of it than the smaller man, huffing as he pushed his hips forward against the cushions beneath him. The intimacy, the strangeness of their kissing was enough to hold his gaze fast. The bleak memories of the Navanese underground were quick to fade before something far better; simple, eager sex. Eager was certainly an apt statement.   
  
"I am a hungry god," Cobra cooed back, arching his chest as thick fingers pushed the flimsy band of fabric up around his collarbone. Only a single keen came from his throat as his piercings were toyed with before he pulled the man forward into a deep kiss, seemingly intent that neither of them should breathe in their clash of tongues. The relief of space between wet mouths came once his head began to swoon, hands snaking up to hold the man's head as if to make sure it was still there while his vision was blurred.   
  
"Feed me your attentions," he carried on, eyes gaining more focus with each shallow gasp. Nose to nose with the man, he teased his bottom lip now with the tip of his tongue, tugging of of the man's hands down to the turgid, studded length constrained by his pants. Perhaps Sigvard had been right; a life of nudism in their bedchambers would have been more convenient. All thoughts of venturing to the beach seemed aeons ago. Yet as much as he yearned to be bare, the friction of the cloth against his cock made his eyelids flicker and his jaw fall slack. "More," he keened.

 

SIGVARD -

 

There was the warmth and the weight of Cobra's body against him like a fever settling into his bones, and very soon it was all Sigvard could think of.  _ "More," _ he parroted in a low and gravelly hum, half-mocking. He swayed back in his place just to watch him, to lose himself in those blue and drunk and venomous eyes. "More, more."   
  
His fingers were feather-light and drifting clumsily down the length of the slave's prick, dragging fabric against his cockhead in a tease like a warm breath—a good start, if only it wasn't an agonizing reminder of the hot mouth nearby. There was a bitten-tongue smile on the Northlander's lips. His grip was coming around his shaft, in the next moment, and his thumb pushed firm into the bottom bar of that long and pretty ladder; dulled by the garment between their skin, it nosed its way slowly up, and up, and up along the piercings, and finally came to draw lazy circles at the underside of his prick's head.   
  
But it was no good like this, with all these clothes. There could be no interruption, as his hungry mouth and hands roamed over the full nakedness of his little god's body; he must be free of these things. And so his grip was gone, back at the hem of his shirt-band, and his mouth was claiming Cobra's before he could think to say otherwise. He was forceful, in that kiss. Nipping the slave's lips, his thick tongue probed for a taste of him, and he swallowed up every little noise he managed to milk out of him as his fingers dragged rough over his dark nipples.

He didn't stop at his collarbone, this time. He spread his hands wide under the strip of fabric, and peeled it up, and went exactly as far as he could manage while keeping that kiss—then broke it to have the man lift his arms over his head so he could be free of the piece. There; a start. As the fabric crumpled to a heap on the stone floor, he bowed his head to Cobra's shoulder, to trace the structure of muscle and bone with the edge of his teeth before suckling bruises into his skin in a track that followed the dip of his collar. Already, his meaty fingers were fumbling with the fastener at the man's hips. Undoing the knot, as he'd watched Cobra practice, he tugged his pants down along his thighs with a rush of impatience—his breathing was coming heavy, complicating his love-bites.   
  
While he could think, if barely, he snatched a sitting cushion from near the table and flung it to a space on the floor where the man's head would land; as he was rocking forward, now, intending to lay him back.

 

COBRA -

 

He was a bastard. A tease; blasphemer. Cobra's teeth gnashed in outrage at the lack of obedience but the emotion was short-lived, extinguished by the stroke of a thumb and a dozen wet little kisses. Breath hitching in his throat, his body was supple and fluid, bending to aid the man's efforts to undress him as though it were the steps of a well-known dance. His cock; his lips, his nipples; yes, he knew the dance well. The headspins faded quickly thanks to the deepness of his gasps, lips twisting into a grin and silent unintelligible words as the cloth was peeled away from him.   
  
Skin to the air once again (the fact that he'd dressed at all seemed silly now) he spread his legs, hooking his ankles around the small of Sigvard's back, pulling his weight with him as he rocked back onto the cushion. The heat of the man's stomach pressing against his prick was welcome but damningly gentle. The slave's body bucked, humping against skin with a grunt of frustration at the lack of sensation. Hands gripped blindly at the blond's back before an inspiration saw him dragging his nails across the broad expanse of flesh, leaving pink tracks in their wake. Not hard enough to bleed, not yet; but the mere idea of it had him tasting the ghost of copper on his tongue. With a moan of arousal he made similar along the man's sides, down his shoulders and the thick backs of his arms.    
  
"Will you choke me, too?" he asked with a deep chuckle, grip tightening around the man's elbows. "Are you like them, Sigvard? Do you want to punish me?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Pain washed over Sigvard’s shoulders like an unhappy bath; he set his jaw against it, and flinched and squirmed as he tried madly to concentrate on getting Cobra’s pants free of his ankles and forgotten on the floor. At last, he fell to his elbows. Fingers knitted into the fringe along the cushion’s seam, and then decided the slave’s hair was better. His mouth came hot and ravenous to the tender of the man’s throat beneath the corner of his jaw, sucking in happy devotion to what the wretched thing had once said about  _ bruises _ , and careful, very careful, to bite him hard enough to feel the strength of it but not to injure. Not to punish. No, no.   
  
There was the soft slap of skin on skin as one of his hands misjudged the distance to Cobra’s hips. Groping messy and feverish at the slave’s plump ass, he shook his head and nosed his way under his jawline to make him crane and bare his throat for nipping teeth. Only he had to speak. He had to speak, because it was funny, and here he was laughing, breathless: “Punish you, no—you would punish me worse.” There was no teasing, here, even if his body shook with delight throughout his confession. “I’m frightened of you, little thing. You have me terrified.”   
  
Of course, in perfect contradiction, he arched his body in a sort of hunger into the nails that scraped at his flesh. His writhing, in pain and gratitude, saying as much as his murmurs of pleasure; saying as much as his raw and fattening cock, barely half-hard, mashing clumsily against his godling’s prick and balls as he rolled his pelvis into the meat of his thighs. He rutted slow and without rhythm. Reaching for something, seemingly, and falling terribly short.

“Irfan,” he barked lowly in the direction of the guard. “The oil, give me the oil.”   
  
Too impatient, too hungry for the lithe body beneath him, he didn’t wait to hear the sound of the vial on stone before his head ducked back down to his chest. His teeth, gentler than anything, captured the stud in his nipple; his tongue swept over the nib, and teased and teased for some seconds before closing his whole mouth against it. Humming satisfaction into his chest, he rolled his fingers over the soft heft of Cobra’s balls, cradling them in a gentle and coaxing massage. The oil would make it better. But he wouldn’t  _ wait _ , the damned thing, before curling finger after finger around the slave’s prick and tugging it softly.

 

COBRA -

 

The man's lips and teeth tickled at his throat, made him shiver and grimace, squirming as he shared in some of Sig's laughter. Punish him; yes, he would. Frighten. Terrify. The admissions of fear had his pulse thrumming in his veins, pressing half moons into Sigvard's arms with his fingernails. The man's address seemed to make him remember that they had a voyeur huffing on the bed, and his head lolled to one side to fix the former whore with a shark's grin.   
  
Irfan froze for a split second, perhaps forgetting how he had been rutting against the cushions a moment prior. Nodding hazily, he rolled off the mattress, searching clumsily on his hands and knees for a vial of the oil. Ylang Ylang blossom; the sweet smell was quick to fill the room when he popped the cap. Wetting his lips as he looked down at the pair, he swallowed as he handed the vial to the hulking Northlander. A yelp escaped his throat as tanned fingers encircled his sensitive prick; he'd come too close.

"Irfan," Cobra cooed as he tugged at the guard's cock in gentle, lazy strokes. Luxuriating in Sigvard's attentions, he unlocked his ankles and spread his legs wide enough for his thighs to touch the floor, making a shallow bridge out of the arch of his spine. "Perhaps you'd like to join me, hm? Have me bite you; drink you." The suggestion earned an uncertain whimper from the Navanese but Cobra was watching Sigvard like a hawk with a gleam in his eye, knowing he'd object. "Would you be angry if I took more acolytes?" he asked huskily.

 

SIGVARD -

 

The cold heat of envy that gripped Sigvard’s guts was predictable. His smile faded sharply, even as his teeth snatched the lid of the vial to open it, and his eyes flashed to Cobra’s—though on catching the hardness in his stare, his gaze just as quickly dropped to watch his own hands again as they did their clumsy work. His naked body couldn’t hide the sudden flush of humiliation. His hands felt uselessly big as he spilled the oil on them and set the vial aside; to sweep his palms together, to weave his fingers, to get himself all slick.   
  
“No,” he huffed lowly, “I wouldn’t.” Speaking seemed to come to him with some difficulty. Straightening up to sit on his heels, he concentrated on Cobra’s body instead: Both hands dropped to his open thighs, spreading wide and pushing warm and oily digits into his supple flesh. Up and up, nearer and nearer to Cobra’s pretty cock before diverting his massaging fingers up the angles of his hips. He was breathing over his tongue in a bid to cool his ruddy face. Like a dog. Angry, no. He was stupid and jealous, but he wasn’t so obviously contradictory; he’d told his little master that he intended to deliver him to godhood, and the fact of the matter was that he would be a shit god if he didn’t have acolytes. So no, no, he wouldn’t be angry. Not for that reason. Anyway, the guard was arrogant, and it would be a very delightful thing to see Cobra put him in his place as viciously as he’d done to Sig.   
  
Curling his grip around his pelvis, he rucked the southerner’s body further up his own lap. If it served to disrupt Irfan’s little treat, so be it.

His eyes hadn’t moved from his hands, and they didn’t now. He watched his blunt fingertips brush the tender flesh of Cobra’s balls, and curl about them, and tuck them into his cradling palm. His other hand circled his girth—his thumb climbing the ladder, as he’d done before, followed closely by a tight grip that stroked along the length of him, and passed over his cockhead, and then his hand was empty. Until he found the root of his prick again, and did the same.   
  
Confident he’d memorized the motions, he brought his impossibly hot mouth to the slave’s chest again. Nursing at him, more for his own benefit than for Cobra’s. Rocking his forehead against muscle and bone so he could take air: “I don’t want you to brand him,” he confessed, as simple and meek as a giant like him could manage. Just whispers in the small space between his mouth and Cobra’s skin. “Please.” The brand was a different thing; not a covenant between god and disciple, he thought, but something else, something precious. Something Irfan hadn’t earned nor had any interest in having. He was Navanese, after all, and they were in Navan. For Sigvard, it had been many years since he’d seen those rotting faces screaming at the sky, and many miles south, and he was no longer capable of distinguishing  _ belonging _ from  _ belonging to _ . It might have been that they were always the same. He pushed his lips to skin again.

  
  


COBRA -

 

_ Liar _ . The world sounded in his mind, reflected in his eyes (all four of them) but not his throat. He didn't need to say it out loud; he was sure the bigger man could see it in his smirk. He showed it in the way he yanked his body forward, far enough to make the slave lose his grip on the guard's cock. Irfan whimpered in protest and buckled forward, chasing the sensation, but Cobra's hands had already snaked behind his head, interlocking to create a headrest in lieu of the pillow.    
  
"Who said I'd be an acolyte, anyway..." Irfan grumbled as he sat back on his haunches with a deep furrow in his brow. His fat cock lolled hard against his thigh and he left it that way, sulking. Glancing upward, Cobra caught the guard eyeing his mouth and gnashed his teeth to cut the fantasy short.    
  
"I won't take cock from both ends like meat on a spit," he drawled, voice throaty from the feeling of Sigvard's expert hands upon his prick. A shiny bead of precum was milked from the tip, quickly smeared away by the warm palm. Cobra let out a low moan as he brought his hands to the man's head, welcome his lips to his tits. His cooing and caressing became almost motherly when he began to plead.

"You're jealous," he simpered, kissing his crown. "Good. That's good, Sigvard, my sweet fool. You'll die for me, won't you? Of course you can be the only one to bear my brand." His eyes opened again as he watched Irfan, dejected, shuffling around behind the blond, giving one of his broad buttocks an appraising  _ slap _ as he knelt behind him. He chuckled as he guessed the man's intent. "How good is your stamina?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Relief lifted goosebumps over Sigvard's body, and washed out of him with a grateful sigh. "I would," he muttered, nodding. He would die for him, yes, of course he would; he'd tangled up his destiny too completely with his godling's, and the alternative was unthinkable. To be alone again. To be without this strange, bewitching thing that was so unlike the gods of his homeland. His eager tongue ran wide over the slave's swollen nipple. Better to die than to go on godless. "I will."   
  
The smack of the guard's palm made him grunt, but even as he did, he rocked forward—one hand abandoning its luxuriating play with Cobra's balls so that he could rest his elbow against the hard floor. Part to present himself to Irfan. Part to collect his own stiffening prick in his grip along with Cobra's, and after a wince and a shiver that punched some air from his lungs, to stroke them both greedily. His lips came to the slave's as if by accident; as if he didn't realize they were close. The epiphany, the kiss, was a hungry one. There was a playfulness in the way his mouth chased after him; a grinning impatience. "My stamina," he rumbled. His lips pressed to the shell of his ear, murmuring. "Look at you, pretty creature." His hand slowed, stopped; he rolled his hips instead to fuck himself against his grip and each of Cobra's piercings. "Look at what you do to my stamina." His body seemed to know that this, along with dying, was his duty.   
  
At last, he dropped his thick fingers to the cleft of the slave's ass. Slow, still. Worming his digits between his plump flesh, pushing firm and lazy towards his asshole only to move over it. Letting him feel the ridge of each knuckle as it did. There was no room for kissing, now, not even between his own husky breathing, staggered by the rutting of his pelvis as he made some clumsy attempt at frotting his cock against Cobra's.

"Irfan." The name was barely discernible. He wanted to delay him. He wanted nothing to distract from sinking his cock into the vicious little slave. "Eat me—eat me first." Patience was quickly evaporating. He bit at Cobra's neck, and his chin, and nosed two fingertips into him. The illusion of gentleness, curling, toying, withdrawing—only to shove deeper into him against the violent rejection of his tight, convulsing walls. Working him hastily, spreading his fingers in some pale imitation of his fat prick.

  
  


COBRA -

 

He felt no fresh pang of pleasure at the man's pledge of loyalty, for it had been plain to see. All over his face; the way he held him,  _ revered _ him. A fixation. It couldn't be helped; it was very possible that little Sigvard had been too far gone years ago, jerking his cock as he spied upon Cobra's show in the circus. Cobra was not so lucky to have been so young then, but Sigvard had been; if he had been a customer of the night tent instead of the big tent show, then things would have gone very differently upon his reunion. The idea of ripping his heart from his chest and eating it seemed fitting. Even now, the splutter that came from Irfan at the request, the jest of cannibalism that Sigvard had unwittingly brought to the threesome, sent a flash of eerie coincidence across his mind. Memories, maybe, but he'd never  _ eaten _ anyone. No stranger to the smell of burning flesh, certainly, but it had stayed, charred, on the bone.    
  
_ The spine is a hinge for the rib cage _ .

The thought came easily to him, tensing his jaw. With a tight smile, he bit back laughter and let the Navanese translation for a rimjob husk out of his throat. Realisation dawned on Irfan's face before he began to chuckle. The mirth sounded more genuine coming from him. "You Northerners are strange," he said again, maybe for the umpteenth time in his life as he used his hands to part the cleft of the man's ass, teasing his hole with the tips of his thumbs.    
  
Cobra's breath hitched as he felt similar sensations, minus the huff of warm air from the mouth of a Navanese guard. A soft cry came at the intrusion, accompanied  by the nip of teeth over the tendons of his neck, sending a shiver through him that had his hands balling to fists. Unclenched, then clenched again. His ass sucked at the man's fingers in a similar way, hips shifting to accommodate the movement. "Harder," he challenged, voice keening. "But slow."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard's spine arched; the image of a wolf over his prey, caging Cobra's body, growing a little more cruel in the way his teeth tugged now at the man's plump lips. Ignorant of the cannibalistic imagery, clearly; else he'd fear being outmatched. But: Slow. Slower, then, dragging his fingers out from the slave's tight ring, gasping in complaint of a too-light tease of Irfan's tongue. No softness in the way he drove into Cobra again. Feral, rhythmless rutting; buried to his last knuckles, seeking out his prostate along his fighting, convulsing walls. Wanting to milk him. Of pleasure, and of all those tempting noises.   
  
His body sunk. His broad chest mashed against the slave's in heaving breaths, in frustrated squirming  for more and more and impossibly more of the guard's mouth. Grinding, now, to feel those studs on his skin, and his own stiff nipples tugged clumsily by the press of Cobra's flesh. "Put your hands on me," he dared him, gruff. It wasn't right that he was kneading emptiness. Punishing air. Not when he could have Sig in splitting agony just as easily.   
  
Pale fingers darted into dark curls, to make a fist and hold him. There was the spear of Irfan's tongue, wet and hot and working him loose, but still he rolled his hips forward, away; to feel the heft of Cobra's thighs on his own, to crush the air between their bodies. Another withdrawal of his two thick fingers, and now a third pushed into him. Harder, and more, and  _ slow _ . He closed his lips against the slave's, and closed his eyes to the sight of him, and luxuriated in the feeling of every inch where skin met skin.

Too much, too much. The whore-soldier with his expert tongue and iron grip was undoing him as much as Cobra's eager, fierce body; pre-cum dribbled from his red and turgid prick, and his twitching hole was begging for the girth that had made him see stars, there, on the bed.   
  
His hand emptied the slave. Slick fingers grasped the root of his cock, and steered the fat head of it to Cobra's puckering rosebud; and he was not slow, here, in rocking his hips to sink himself inch by throbbing inch. His hands had abandoned their duties. Both arms around his waist, holding him tight and close in the desperate possessiveness of a breeding animal, he ground into him until his hips pushed painful into the pillow of his ass, and then further still; and then back, finally, to take a lazy, luxuriating pace.

  
  


COBRA -

 

He met the violent kiss gamely, fingers tangling in blond hair and dragging him forward, clashing tongues and biting lips when he could get away with it. The fingers inside him worked him up into  frenzy, a mess of single-minded  _ want _ with no real plan of how to get there. He'd asked for this, he knew, but that fact did nothing to stop his body spasming, throwing his head back with a mewl as if he was a whore again.    
  
The dare had him jeering; too hard to open his eyes to focus with thick fingers milking his prostate, he screwed them shut and found his way around Sigvard's body blind, raking fingernails down his back once more before his arms reached the limit of his position. Grunting, he brought one palm up to shove the man's face to the side before pulling him down the the galaxy of bruises at his neck. Hands slipped under his shoulder now, taking handfuls of flesh at his sides as he pulled him closer.    
  
There was a grunt of complaint as he actions pulled the blond away from the guard who was face-deep in his ass. Cobra grimaced as other hands closed over his, pulling the man deeper as he nosed into his cleft and spread his pucker with his tongue; a teasing imitation of what he could be doing with his cock.

With a growl, Cobra yanked his hands back, nails digging into the meat of Sig's tits instead, somehow irrationally averse to being pinned in such a way when he was pinned in all others. Fingers squeezed, breaking skin in some places out of vengeance as the man pushed into him so quickly that it felt as if the very air was pushed out of his lungs. He drew it back in in a slow, heaving gasp, flexing his fingers to press fingertips against the half-moon welts he'd made. He bared his teeth as his eyes opened to slits, regarding the man with his usual mix of arousal and fury.   
  
"If you cum," he warned, having felt the slick drip of pre before the man's prick split him open. "I will pin you down and ride you until I've had mine too."    
  
A heavy gasp came from behind the pair as Irfan broke away from Sig's rocking ass, unable to keep his place without feeling like his neck might snap. With a breathless chuckle, he leered and stuck the blond like a pig with two fingers, spreading them wide as he looked down at them. "Shall I make you cum faster, Sigvard?" He teased.

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

The effect of the chilly warning was  _ pronounced _ , slowing Sigvard’s rolling hips further still, and putting a crease in his brow, and having him bury his nose and huffing mouth in Cobra’s hair to murmur foreign pleas. He knew that excruciating torture, and knew it well. It could be thoroughly enjoyed, in the same way his whole body thrummed with the pleasure-pain of the slave’s clawing fingers, but he hadn’t yet worked himself into the necessary delirium—and he did want, desperately, to please his little godling.   
  
Mercifully, he’d moved away from the southerner’s ear before snarling and barking over his shoulder: “No! Cunt—” All that noise, and still he rocked his plump and greedy ass into those fingers at every withdrawal of his bucking hips. Fretful, horny grunting lessened the threat in his voice. “You try, I’ll break your lip. Bastard, cunt!” And  _ still _ , he clenched his walls against the fingers working him loose, drawing them deeper and deeper and whimpering in furious helplessness when they bottomed out.   
  
The Northlander shivered and shored himself up, drawing back to see where his meaty hand had Cobra fixed by the hair, to see the venom and the ecstasy in his face, to see the sheen of sweat over his tan skin. His fist clamped dark locks harder, painful, and there was the violent  _ smack _ of his hips into the slave’s round ass as he hilted himself just to watch how it wracked his body.   
  
His head bowed, then. As close as he could come to offering up at an altar, he pushed his lips to the tenderest meat of his throat; no teeth, now, only a broad swipe of his tongue, and suckling to bring the sting of blood to his skin. Gratitude rumbled in low hums from his chest, staggered by the rut of his hips as his cock drove again and again for his prostate. Cruel to stop just there, he thought. Or not cruel enough. He had one good hand; it dropped now to cage Cobra’s well-oiled prick, to tug it, too soft and aimless to be anything but teasing.

 

COBRA -

 

Irfan's rich laughter filling the room but mostly Sigvard's ear as the man gamely leaned forward, driving his thick fingers in further with him. "Your ass says something different," he laughed. "But if you insist." His fingers left the man briefly, pulling back against the way the greedy walls fought to keep him, and only one returned in its place. With a shit-eating grim, Irfan's chest pressed flush against Sig's back, teeth nipping at the shell of his ear as his single digit grazed the man's prostate. Teasing. Slow. Perhaps worse than before, depending on what the man's goals were.   
  
Beneath them, the fury was beginning to slip from Cobra's snarling lips in the same way his fingers slipped from their vicious hold on the man's pecs. For a few sweet moments, he cupped the man's chest with keening moans just like a real lover might. Chin pushed back to expose his throat, the swathe of a tongue over the vulnerable flesh had him shuddering like some kind of caught prey. It brought out a sharp, helpless yelp from him, jaw clenched in frustration, fists clenched as they beat once against the drum of Sigvard's chest. Overwhelmed by the sensations, tears squeezed from his shocking blue eyes and his breathing came in rocky gasps.

Crying out, his hands flew to the man's hair again, whimpering as he dragged the man's face up with a sudden strength, capturing his mouth in a sudden, desperate kiss before the feeling of being  _ prey _ awakened something terrible in him. He hummed pleas and curses in his throat as skilled fingers tugged his dripping cock, hips too far pinned by Sig's weight to do anything to buck into his hands. Drawing air though his nose in sharp huffs, he fought to deepen the kiss as much as he could, fighting the slip between worlds that his building orgasm was sure to bring him. But his fear was dwarfed by his desire to cum; his muscles still clenched as he finally broke the kiss and began to plead breathlessly.    
  
"Touch me. Touch me harder. Please. Sigvard.  _ Harder _ . I..." he stammered, his pleading accompanied by a smug Irfan shoving  _ three _ fingers deep into Sigvard's ass. 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard nodded, frantic and wordless, and closed his grip around Cobra's prick in an iron grip that was meant to be merciful. Slow, first. Marvelling at the feeling of every bar and vein under his calloused fingertips. Only growing more and more urgent with the rest of him—arching up, pushing his broad back into the weight of Irfan's chest, nonsense spilling from his lips in anger and grief and want.   
  
Untangling his hand from the slave's hair, he rushed an embrace around him; hauling him up from the floor just enough to snake his thick arm under his body and clamp his hand over the muscle of his shoulder. Doing little to diminish the image of predator as he held Cobra in place, his body flushed and heaving and sweat-slicked with the effort of sawing into his godling's tight heat in ravaging possessiveness. He snatched his lips again, briefly, before remembering the importance of breathing. The edge of his wandering teeth dragged along the soft flesh under his eye instead, scalding with the heat of his gasping.   
  
" _ Gods, _ " he managed, finally, barely, between animal grunting. Pleasure buzzed electric through every nerve, and there was so much  _ more _ of it just beyond his grasp, and so much better, and his idiotic mind was fleeting in and out of the temptation of chasing after it. His hips lost their rhythm, and stubbornly found it again, over and over. He was stroking Cobra's prick  _ furiously _ now, and squirming away from Irfan's fingers; his wracked body doing whatever it could put more space between him and the heavenly pressure building up and up and up.   
  
This time, he didn't have the sense or the time to move from Cobra's face before shouting at the guard: " _ Fuck _ me! Bastard!" Groaning, whimpering under his careful torture. Fingers were too much and not enough. The greedy beast wanted everything. "Fuck me—more, more, you shit!"

 

COBRA -

The grip around his prick started it, his mind already thrumming with mixed emotions from the pleasure, the pain, the inexplicable tears. Then Irfan, with a gleeful grin, obliged the blond's demands, lining up his fat cock and taking the man's thick hips for leverage before his slammed it home. The weight, in turn, forced Sigvard inside the slave up to the hilt, the kind of deep that felt like a shockwave through him. He came; of course he came, his burst of secual aggression had had him close for a long time now. Yet even as hot cum spilled from his cock and his tight walls clamped harder around Sigvard's prick, he was quite. Eyes wide, unfocused. Of course it came.   
  
The sands of the desert were paler at the coastline where they mixed with beach, gently shifting over the slopes of dunes with the air of ocean breeze. Urd's head was wrapped in a turban as it always was, though, with no strands of hair loose to billow in the wind. The sound of ship bells in the distance distracted Cobra briefly, but the world blurred to patchy colour beyond the small bubble where he and the chief of the Urd tribe stood. A hand reached out to cup his face.   
  
_ I was wrong to leave you _ .   
  
"You didn't," Cobra answered, "I left."   
  
_ Then I was wrong to let you leave, Keht. _   
  
Hands around his throat. He had not been breathing in real life, and he startled back to consciousness with a deep and panicked gasp.

Irfan, true to his whore's training, had made a valiant effort of riding Sigvard's ass hard for as long as he could handle before he buckled forward, spilling his load inside him for a second time. Utterly content, he tugged at the man's earlobe with his teeth, oblivious to the events beneath him until he glimpsed Cobra breathing weakly on the floor. He eased up, then, enough to let Sigvard move freely.    
  
"I've never seen you cum that hard," the guard commented, eyebrows raised. "Not even with two. Is his dick that good?"   
  
Breathing deeply, Cobra frowned and didn't bother to respond, attempting to roll over onto his side. "Get out of me," he muttered, afraid to close his eyes.

 

SIGVARD -

 

A shudder wracked Sigvard's body, a pale cry coming from his lips—even as his balls tightened, even as he pulled Cobra close and pounded into him, living for the feeling of the slave's convulsing walls milking him for everything he had. His own, in turn, milking Irfan.   
  
There was a kind of grief backing his noises. A kind of panic strung through every grunt and gasp and groan. He knew he was somewhere else; he could feel it in his breathless body, and the way those abusing hands had dropped from his own meaty flesh. He was gone off somewhere. Seeing something, like out on the terrace, choking under the Northlander's grip. All the ecstasy of cumming was perverted by sudden worry, but still his body couldn't stop its frantic hunt for pleasure, rutting and rutting and rutting.   
  
Words barely made it through the thick and heady fog of orgasm, and even then they were distant and confusing.  _ Get out _ was clear, at least. He uncurled his embrace from Cobra's body, and rocked back, withdrawing his softening cock; barely able to overcome the weight of his arm to pat Irfan's thigh, too, and feel himself emptied. Ordinarily, he would be compelled to fall on his ass, or on his back, better still, and let the stone seep all the heat from him. But there was that panic, still. So, watching his godling with glassy blue eyes, he snatched Irfan by the wrists, and tugged his arms firmly around himself; settling his thick ass into the floor, he leaned back into the guard's chest.   
  
"I'll take you to the baths," he breathed, hoarse from all that roaring. "Once I've caught my breath." A hand lifted to push errant strands of blond hair from his sweaty face. "You saw something." Not asking what. Not asking  _ why _ , although he wondered now if it would always be a risk with fucking. A grunt. "A vision. Hm?"

 

COBRA -

He felt a little better when the intrusion left him, but only a little. What had been so welcome moments before was now only a dull ache. A feeling of unclean. Sigvard was right to announce that he would take Cobra to the baths. It was the reassurance that finally allowed the slave to close his eyes, letting out a deep sigh.   
  
Irfran grumbled slightly at the arrangement, but obliged the man by holding him. It felt less comfortable or sincere than the kind of embrace they'd shared earlier, fucking, but even he, mischievous sod that he was, had enough social tact to see that the gesture was needed. He leaned forward against the man's shoulder, looking much more confused than the foreigner about talk of seeing things. Evidently he had never given Cobra's words much stock when he's spoken of being a seer. Of being a god. A bad person. Cobra had claimed to be a lot of things over the years.   
  
"He's coming for me," Cobra spoke up finally, voice quiet but confident. Turning his head, he looked up at the men with a deep furrow in his brow, reaching up to trace the curve of his own neck with his fingertips. "He never cared before I started having visions, you know," he smiled thinly. "I think he only ever cared about Keht."   
  
"The Urd's prophet?" Irfan piped up, looking skeptical. "Those are fairy tales. He died anyway, didn't he? At the capital."

"Drowned," Cobra nodded in agreement. The guard pulled back at that, pulling Sig's body with him a fraction. The silence hung in the room for a moment before he shook his head, leaving them both and crawling towards the edge of the closet to pulls some shift robes free from the colourful pile of cloth.    
  
"It was too long ago for anyone to know that," he scolded half-heartedly, tossing the fabric at the pair. "You'll need to dress if you want to go to the baths."


	11. Unwelcome Visitors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to ma buddy for letting me try some pretty experimental stuff with these characters ;D xoxo

SIGVARD -

 

The words came like ice water on Sigvard's flushed skin, lifting a thousand little goosebumps and causing him to hold a half-breath. Coming to this place? Coming now? It was adrenaline that sank into his bones much more than it was fear, though a little of that too; it felt so much like an ambush, and here he'd been whiling away his time fucking and eating figs rather than training up. But that little spark in his chest that told him to flee was overruled by a remarkable eagerness to put a face to the fucker's name. That, and years and years of practice. Fear was hardly frightful when he was so well equipped to weaponize it.   
  
He missed what was uncanny in the remark about drowning; having never been properly educated in his histories (or arithmetic, or reading, or scarcely anything), the nature of the prophet's demise might have been common knowledge, for all he knew. Settling back onto his palms, he was much more interested in the sight of Irfan's ass and thighs as he crawled away. His mouth opened, mulling over speech. Unwise, he thought. The guard seemed agitated by all this talk of prophecy.   
  
In a reversal of his earlier stance, he was happy to take the shift, and it was only two attempts before he worked out how to put it on the right way 'round. Evidently this gave him some confidence, as he immediately tried to assist Cobra in dressing himself—ending up being more of a nuisance than helpful, tugging the slave's arms through his sleeves before he'd popped his head through the neck. When his 'generosity' was fiercely rejected, he sat and watched, fidgeting at the sensation of the guard's thick cum dribbling out of him.

At last, with the two of them swaddled up in the dignity of clothing, he rocked up onto his knees. His great, fair arms outstretched, tangling his fingers in the softness of Cobra's garment before spreading his palms wide into the angle of his waist. "Come," he murmured. He meant to hold him in the usual way, like an infant being put to bed. "Let me carry you—we'll be there quicker."

 

COBRA -

 

Wriggling into his own shift, Irfan sighed and looked down at the mess they'd created. The room still looked better than it had in years. The servants would clean it up again, at least until Cobra snapped and chased them out. Perhaps they wouldn't even remain in Hamad's palace long enough for that to happen.   
  
The shorter man hissed and fussed as he was clumsily dressed, feeling his skin begin to crawl with the inescapable grime of orgasm. Nipping at the air, his features scrunched up as his arms were worked into the shift and he fought the man when he attempted to pick him up.   
  
"No," he groused, stepped back warily. His foot ached dully in response but it was a pain he could tolerate. His disagreement didn't like with Irfan's gaze, however; the guard had seen him in far greater disgrace than being carried like a babe. No; the issue was that Urd was coming, and the young prophet could not stand the idea that even through a vision, he might be seen as being weak.

Resolutely, and clenching his ass to keep Sigvard's cum from dripping out, he walked out of the room with a somewhat stiff gait. He didn't look back to see if the men were following him; he could hear their footsteps. Most of his senses felt heightened in the wake of his vision, and that nothing to dull his urgency to bathe.   
  
"He'll choke me, when he comes. I don't know why," he muttered to Sigvard as they walked, tone growing conspiratory. "He does not seem angry, but I know he will do it. It is what Urd does." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sig, for his part, made no effort to keep the guard's mess neatly contained in his warm cunt; intending to scrub himself clean regardless, he was content to saunter along and ignore the slickness crawling down his meaty thighs and drying tacky. This way, he felt he could better concentrate on what Cobra was saying.   
  
After some concentration, he decided he didn't like it. He managed to keep his displeasure to himself, mind; it took some straining and setting of his jaw, but he was able to suppress the disdainful snort and low mutterings that threatened to bubble up from him and escape. His pale lips went into a line instead, and he took a long stride to close the gap between them a little. He wanted his presence felt behind the slave. Not beside him, not quite.   
  
"You'll let him," he rumbled softly. "I know that. You want answers, I think. You want some connection to your people, hm?" He would not be convinced otherwise. It was clear to him in the way Cobra so viciously defended them, the silly savages, although he'd spent his whole life away; and the way he'd induced visions unto himself the moment Sigvard had left him. To see if Urd was right.

A long, long sigh was carefully pressed rather than let out of the Northlander's lungs. There seemed to him to be a naiveness to it all. "So let him, if it serves you, if it means a thing to you." If it really was answers he was after, Sig didn't at all think he would get them, and barely disguised his skepticism now. But he didn't need to be a believer; only to be obedient. "I will not stop it. I'll be here to fetch you on the other end of it."   
  
His muscles started to itch. Fists gently closed, opened, closed again. "But do not let him do it only because it's what he's always done. What rotten shit. He's your tool, not the other way around—you'll tell me if you ever want him put down. You'll tell me this, yes?"   
  


COBRA -

 

"It's going to happen regardless. Why struggle?" Cobra's expression darkened as he approached the bath, realising just how many acts and indignities he had suffered through life based on the very same argument. Setting his jaw, he stopped to peel off the shift and tossed it in a hamper, stooping to pick up a wash pail before heading to the water. His glowering face was reflected in the smooth water for a moment before he filled the bucket, taking it away from the bath and towards a a spot where there was a grate in the floor.   
  
"It means something... ngh," Cobra frowned, squatting and scooping up some water from the pail to help him clean Sigvard's seed from his ass. He just didn't know what 'something' was. That kind of thing, he expected, might be explained through words rather than violence. Or perhaps another vision of the Kehts before him. It would be nice to have one where he wasn't surrounded by fire or water. Splashing more water between the cleft of his ass until he was satisfied, he stood and tipped the pail over his head, letting it wash down into the grate. It was then that he deemed himself clean enough to enter the bath without fouling the water.   
  
"Urd cannot be killed," he fixed Sigvard with a serious glare as he carefully sat at the bath's edge. "It would plunge the tribe into chaos. "I don't want either of you to raise hands to him." His eyes flicked between the blond and Irfan, who only needed to wash his cock and was already lazing in the water.   
  
"As if I'm stupid enough to fight an Urdai chief," Irfan scoffed, showing his teeth to the ceiling. "I'd sooner smoke a pipe of rotgut leaf."    
  
"And you, Sigvard?" Cobra asked. "Will you hate him because we are close?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Blue eyes measured the bath, and Sigvard was swiftly naked and wandering to the corner furthest from the men; slipping his massive body into the water with a small splash, he wallowed in welcome solitude and listened quietly to the goings-on. Wetness seeped cold and irritating into his bandage. Thoroughly devoid of patience, he tugged it off his shoulder, bundled it up, and used it to scrub the cum and the oil off his flesh—fair skin going red where he rubbed at himself with furious efficiency, a ruddy backdrop to the welts from Cobra's clawing nails and the bruises from his suckling mouth.   
  
"I'm tired of that question," he huffed, his eyes never leaving his work. He didn't know the point of asking, except to aggravate him, and he was in no mood to be aggravated; besides, he didn't quite know what was meant by 'close,' and didn't want to. So he tossed the soggy bandage, and drew a breath, and sunk into the water. There, he roughed his hands through his hair and beard. And waited, and waited, until his lungs burned.   
  
When his blond head resurfaced, only enough to clear his mouth, he watched Cobra at the water's edge. "I don't intend to kill him," he remarked. "Only show him his place, and only if you ask me to." His loyalty had been clear enough to the slave before, in the throes of fucking. His jealousy had been  _ good _ , then.   
  
There was a wariness in his eyes above the water. "I don't like this, this shit about 'it's going to happen regardless.' You said you'll fight for me. You'll crush my enemies, you said. Why should I believe you'll do a thing, when you say 'why struggle?' Hm? When you resign yourself to fate so easily. Where am I supposed to see hope in you? Where is the strength you promised me?"

 

COBRA -

 

"And yet I continue to ask it," Cobra answered back without missing a beat, slowly kicking his feet and watching the ripples in the water. His blue eyes flicked to Sigvard as he spoke of showing Urd his place, of enemies, of promises. Scoffing, he pushed off the edge of the bath and dipped beneath the surface for a moment, scrubbing the grime of the day from his hair. Was he cursed to be unclean in this man's company? Maybe. Arguably he'd never been clean to start with, anyway. At least his skin didn’t itch any more.   
  
He resurfaced with a sigh, waiting for the bulk of the water in his curly hair to run down his face in rivulets, trickling from the corners of his lips. He turned to the blond, shaking the last drops of water from his face. "You speak of enemies," he simpered, inclining his head. "What of them? Can you name them, Sigvard? Do you know their number? Do you see their faces when you close your eyes at night?" He chuckled faintly, recalling his own history.    
  
Lifting his head, Irfan pressed his lips together and grew quiet, having received a similar talk in the past.    
  
"Or would you have me rip apart a whole country for the sake of your revenge?" Cobra carried on, stepping closer. His movements were made slow and steady by the weight of the water. "You are reckless. Angry. I wouldn't put it past you. But if you don't know your enemies intimately, you will get no satisfaction from destroying them. I promise you."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The hulking soldier watched his little master from across the water, warier and warier still. Cobra meant to close the gap; Sigvard kept it wide. There was the advantage of the bath's edge at his back, and soon feeling it, he hauled himself up and out to sit with his feet still in the water. Thinking of standing. Of going over to get one of those flimsy towels. He would, if his godling insisted on coming closer.   
  
"I don't want to destroy them for the satisfaction of it," he said, lowly and simply put. "It's not revenge I'm after." Irfan was forgotten, as was any notion of preserving either of their dignities. "You say all these things, these silly things, as if you know me—as if you're the only one who sees faces at night." His expression soured; more disappointed than angry, but certainly angry too. Still, his voice was thin. "You don't know a thing. Not if you think it's vengeance I want." What was his misguided thinking? That all this was about the woman, the boy? But he'd made it so perfectly clear. To him, and again to Hamad.   
  
"It was here that I told you what I wanted, and hardly a week ago. Have you forgotten?" He'd wasted years and years on elusive revenge; he'd gone to madness and back doing it. He would not go to those depths again. He didn't want violence for violence's sake; it was only necessary to reclaim the peace he had utterly no right to. "I have names," he muttered, snatching up a towel. "I have them all."

 

COBRA -

 

His pace slowed even further as he noticed the distance the man kept between them, a dark smile spreading across his lips with a gleam in his eyes. Feeling very much like a crocodile, he bent his knees and lowered further into the water, chin grazing the surface.   
  
"Did you?" he drawled, inclining his head as if to take a moment to remember. No recollection sparked in his eyes; only something close to simmering contempt. "We don't remember. Shall I ask again? Would you like me to beg?" He chuckled, grinning as he watched the man scamper towards the towels.    
  
"Cobra?" Irfan piped up, peering at the man.   
  
The slave paused, turning his head a fraction to fix the guard with a glowering stare. "And what do you want?" he asked with a sneer. "Aren't you satisfied, yet? I have already killed for  _ you _ ."   
  
The corners of Irfan's lips turned down and he blanched away, retracting the curious hand he'd reached out with. "You're tired," he told himself, turning away to climb out of the bath. Cobra loudly clicked his tongue, tilting his head back and arching his spine to dip his hair beneath the surface of the water once more, scrubbing it clean.    
  
"Cowards," he cursed with a wrinkled nose. "Both of you. Urd can't come sooner. Then we will go to the heathen capital and remove this coward king. There is a man there named Nadamir who I would  _ like _ to exchange words with," he grimaced. 

 

SIGVARD -

 

There was the soft tumble of cotton over Sigvard’s head, and the aching heat of friction as his furious hands worked the cloth against his scalp. The pain distracted him somewhat from the bile summoned up by Cobra’s pitiless mocking. A favourite hobby of the slave’s, it seemed to him; and contrary to Irfan’s musings, he hadn’t yet noticed a bit of difference whether he was tired or perfectly alert.   
  
The white beast went through two more towels drying himself more and more violently in an effort to make the slave’s biting words pale in comparison, resulting in a glowing pink cleanliness that was entirely incidental. Without an inch of dampness left on him (though he did look carefully, spending a healthy minute scrubbing the crack of his ass), he pushed out a sigh to punctuate Cobra’s last venom, and dropped the sopping heap to the floor.   
  
Indecision was apparent: The way he swayed in one direction or the other, wondering whether he ought to just leave now for some respite and trust that Irfan would keep the psychotic little creature from choking himself in the meantime. But no. He’d made everything complicated by vowing to stay at his side, and he could manage at least to keep that simple promise; so at last, he wandered back to the water’s edge, and squatted down to watch the man with a hard gaze.   
  
“This,” he gestured to the bite, raw against the air, “I only wear this because you promised me what I wanted, little thing. You intend to go to the capital and off your shit king, but I only conspired with you because you said would do one thing for me. And now—now you won’t do it, I think. You’ve forgotten your covenant to me. I wonder why I would go with you to the capital and risk dying a kingslayer when you won’t remember your promise, much less honour it. Hm? Why would I go, when your word and my life mean so little to you?”

 

COBRA -

 

Irfan dried himself much more warily, keeping one eye on the slave as though he might pounce at any moment. He looked to Sigvard for reassurance but found nothing; a close as he claimed to be to the Urdai seer, it seemed that simple experience won out in spotting when the man was not behaving like himself. His fury, he had seen countless times, yes; but not like this. Not vile and all-consuming like this.   
  
Cobra wallowed in the pool, mercifully dipping his face below the surface so his eyes, blue and terrible and somehow staring right through to the soul, could watch the man scramble. His smile was half hidden, half distorted by the water's reflection, dripping water once more when he resurfaced to speak.   
  
"Come now, Sigvard," he cooed, voice hushed to the point of purring. "I always keep my promises. I will remove you enemies from this plane; leave nothing but the bones. And you can find a place in your frigid north to while away the rest of your mortal life, wondering what might have been if the world was not so cruel to you." He swam closer to the edge, fingers drumming on the surface of the tile.    
  
"He loves you, you know. I can feel it," he informed the man with a sincere stare,  breaking out into a fey grin. "Isn't that funny? We might as well be strangers to you."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Blue eyes flashed wide. A white-hot chill burned Sigvard's skin, so much more potent than the heartsbane, and dug its nettled roots into his muscle and bone—his flesh was alive with goosebumps, every hair on end. He breathed, barely: "What is this?" Madness, clearly. But he couldn't work out what had caused it. A curse, maybe; cruel magic. Or was it only an extension of Cobra's usual insanity? Possession didn't enter his mind. His people had no concept of such a thing, two spirits occupying one body, and it didn't occur to him now that he might be speaking to some other unknown, unknowable creature.   
  
The thing to do, he thought, would be to get a shaman. She would know one way or the other—sorcery or psychosis—and have some sort of trick to deal with either one. But he was miles and miles away from the unnatural women he trusted in these matters, and everything he'd heard of Urd and Keht and southern mysticism had left him thoroughly distrustful of it. So he would have to work something out himself.   
  
His face fixed to something of determination. Dropping to his knees, he snatched one of the man's wrists in an iron grip—he couldn't tug him fully from the water, but he did lurch him forward, at least. His thunderous voice bellowed across the water: "Cobra!" As if to get through to him. His skin was getting hotter and hotter. There had been too much choking, he thought; too many visions. He must startle the slave back into sense. So he opened his free hand wide, and whipped his palm across his cheek.

  
  


COBRA -

 

“This is the way of the Urdai,” he purred. Cobra’s lips smiled wide, his intense gaze never wavering from Sigvard. It had finally dawned on him, it seemed, that all was not well with the object of his infatuation. His slips of the tongue had taken a long time to spot; regrettable, perhaps, but it had been a long, long time since he had spoken from a throat made of flesh.

The yelling made him laugh; he could not help it. The man’s actions were pitiful, in a way. He had no idea what he was dealing with; Sig’s determination to shut out the world around had finally caught up with him, it seemed. The strike across his cheek, however, was more sobering, bringing a hard look to his eye as he turned to look back at the man, making no effort to free his wrists.

“Cobra is sleeping,” he ground out in a warning tone. “You fucked him too well. I took the reins instead of letting him pass out again. You should be grateful.”

“Sigvard,” Irfan said anxiously, “Don’t hurt him! What if he feels it?”

Although a welt raised on his skin, not much about the slave indicated he had felt the blow at all. He smiled again, gamely. “If you want to make him hate you, by all means, beat us,” he invited the man. “The fate lines are easier with less lives tangled in them.”

 

SIGVARD -

 

A noise of grief croaked out of him, hearing that unholy voice grate from Cobra's body—familiar and unfamiliar all at once, and so horrifyingly, helplessly confusing. How could he be him, and yet not him...?   
  
He hesitated, breathless, loosening and tightening his grip again. As if to reassure himself that the man was corporeal; that this whole terrible scene wasn't just a figment of his imagination. Briefly, he considered the idea he might never have recovered from the peyote, and instead been pulled deeper and deeper still, and was now maybe on the beach somewhere pawing harmlessly at sand. He shouldn't have let himself have the hope. It was miserable when he shook his head to untangle himself from the illusion, and found that it was still there.   
  
"You aren't speaking sense!" Voice accusing, pleading. "Cobra—" A useless grunt. He dropped the wrist he held, and instead leaned forward to plunge both hands under the slave's arms; like this, with all his strength and more, he hauled him out from the water in a clumsy, drawn-out effort that had their bodies fumbling and dragging along the tile.   
  
Sitting, legs splayed, he gathered his godling up in his lap and clung to him in fierce and angry desperation. Huffing into his shoulder, he demanded: "Why are you sleeping?" He didn't understand, and his blunt fingers seemed to punish him for it, digging into his flesh as he tried to pull him closer. "Wake up, then! What's this talk of fate? Who is it you think you are, Cobra, please...?"

 

COBRA -

 

A sigh pushed out of the slave's mouth; with a withering stare, he allowed his flesh and bone to be hoisted out of the water and manhandled with panicked fervour. He did not fight back but there was something hollow about his compliance; a profound sense of detachment where there would usually be kicking, biting, hissing;  _ anything _ .    
  
"You won't wake him," he said coldly. "And you won't part us. Ours is a bond that started braiding over a decade ago; it has been bound in rope, and mud, and ice, and fire. Fury, anger, fucking, justice," His lips quirked at the last one, sparing Irfan a glance again. "I have you to thank for that, Irfan. Even a Navanese, godless pillagers though they may be, can be useful to me."   
  
"What are you?" Irfan whimpered. I would seem that he, not Sigvard, has phrased the question to the creature's liking.    
  
"They call me Keht," he smiled. "It is an old name, and it will not change for as long as the Urdai walk. So it will never change." Even the rich laugh that came from his throat now sounded off-filter for Cobra, the way he placed his hands on the Northerner's shoulders and calmly pushed him back, wrong. All of it wrong. Yet the deity carried on regardless.

"Go to the kitchens," he spoke to Irfan now. "Have them bring me more meat. And you, foolish outlander," he sneered, cupping Sig's face in his hands. "Tell me more about these enemies I will consume. We have a bond, now, and it is not broken lightly."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard had clung to him, for all that haunting laughter, for the unfamiliar way his mouth and body moved as if swaying under puppet-strings. Even when the slave put space between their chests, those pale fingers curled and took root in his flesh. Touch was the only one of his senses that wasn't betraying him; Cobra's skin was warm, still, and soft and clean in his usual obsessive way. His ribs and his waist and his hips were familiar under the Northlander's grip. If only he could close his eyes and ears to all this. If only he could stop gaping at this monster.   
  
The talk of some covenant made his stomach lurch and his blood boil with anger; in delayed reaction, he took a sharp gasp and lifted both hands to yank the creature's away from his face. "I have no bond with you!" It might have been harder to untangle  _ Cobra _ from  _ Keht _ if he'd started using the prophet's name to refer to his godling, but that would have demanded taking the Urdai somewhat seriously; so in his mind, now, there was still the one and the other, utterly distinct. He was beginning to understand, only he wasn't.   
  
"This is Urd's doing," he announced, sounding astonishingly confident for a man who had no reason to be. "Irfan—" He was rocking to the side, flipping the both of them over, pinning Cobra's wrists to the tile; fumbling to collect the both of them into one hand, so that he could clamp the other firmly over the slave's lips. "Irfan, you must not listen to him. Fetch a towel for his mouth. This is Urd's doing—he comes, remember—this is some foul magic of his, some corruption he brings with him." His mind had begun to work frantically to fill the great void of confusion, and he was soon fixated on the first idea to make any sense to him. "We must get Cobra away. Before he reaches us. The capital, or another place. A towel, a towel, quickly; we must get him away."

 

KEHT - 

 

A cruel chuckle. "You do," he said ominously, lowering his chin. "We are one and the same now; my teeth made that mark just as much as his did."   
  
Torn, Irfan staggered back and forth between the door and the towel racks for a moment before panic ultimately forced his feet towards the towels. Bringing a washcloth over, he rolled it up and shoved it in the slave's mouth without ceremony, snatching his hand back with alarm as Keht gnashed at the gag. Rather  than be defeated, however, the little deity made a strange, chuckling noise in his throat as he rose up on his knees, mashing his forehead against Sigvard's with furious intent. When he spoke next, he did not need his mouth. The words echoed easily inside the Northerner's mind.   
  
_ You do not think we have a bond? Let me show you. _   
  
"Sigvard?" Irfan's voice wavered. "Sigvard, what is happening?" His voice sounded like it was getting further and further away until suddenly, Sigvard's vision was replaced with a viewpoint very close to the ground. Quiet, hiding. The smell of hay and feet. Cobra's body was gone from his lap which now lay flush with the bare floorboard. A much younger Cobra, thinner to the point of uncomfortable angles, now contorted his body on the stage.   
  
_ I have seen your soul, Sigvard of the North. _ , Keht's voice echoed in his head.  _ And I will consume it if you betray me _ . The blond's  vision, as though guided by a rough hand, grew unsettling, zooming in on awful details of the cherished scene with the erratic frenzy of a chameleon's eye. The ridge of rib under malnourished flesh, the hint of a welt hiding behind a costume bracelet, from the bonds. The flicker of a grimace as Cobra bent his body over, over, over still, making a tight curve out of his spine, his stomach a taut, flat plane travelled by a spruiker's lecherous palm.   
  
It stopped almost as suddenly as it had begun. Outside the tent now; in the dark. In the mud.

_ We were made here, you know. _ , Keht's voice grew husky now as together, they watched the scene from the back of the tent, something Sigvard had never witnessed as a boy. A caressed cheek met only with stiff compliance. A tonic of some kind shoved at his face, swallowed clumsily before he was pushed forward to a different, smaller tent with no handsome posters or string lights.    
  
_ To own an Urdai is a curse. I have watched these people since the beginning. And no one had committed such an atrocity in decades... _ Cobra's bony shoulders disappeared beyond the tent flap.  _ As the man who whored his son. _   
  
The Northerner's eyes opened again, properly this time, to the sight of a frantic Irfan gently slapping his face. Cobra's body lay limp on the floor; sleeping again, for now.   
  
"Sigvard!" The guard cried. "What happened?! You stopped making sound!"

 

SIGVARD -

 

There was a long and terrible moment where Sigvard's body seemed to come out of his reverie before his mind did; his gaze slid slowly upwards, and his arms shrugged inward to his chest in the manner of dying. He was close to collapse when finally his blue eyes sparked with recognition, and after minutes without breathing he now took a deep and shuddering gasp. Immediately, he was seized by a dizzying lurch in his stomach. As if the air rotted him from the inside out. Clumsy hands swatted Irfan away, and he managed to crawl a foot or two before his body contorted in a violent retch—fruitless, at first. Moaning like grief, his guts tying themselves in knots, he gagged and heaved again and spilled his meager lunch onto the tiles.   
  
He was shaking. A cold sweat slicked his fair skin. But there was a feral relief about him, as he spat the last acrid taste from his mouth; as if his body, in all its animal wisdom, had rid itself of some unknown poison, and now could rest a little.   
  
Her hands would be in his hair, when he would wake from a dream like that. Panicked and sweating and murmuring prayers she didn't understand, like he was now. She would stroke his blond locks between her fingertips and coo at him:  _ Ashi, ashi _ . He raked his blunt nails against his scalp in some shit substitute, and tangled his hands painfully into his hair, and said the word to himself over and over.   
  
At last, he rolled to his side, distancing himself from that sour, gory puddle. "Visions," he croaked. Eyes closed to blackness before flashing wide again: He'd realized, in an instant of horrifying regret, that he didn't ever want to lose sight of the walls and ceiling and Cobra and Irfan. "A voice, and visions. Somewhere else, someplace else." He was struggling to be specific. He understood the idea of otherworldly sight, of course, but articulating his own experience was another matter altogether. He'd forgotten the word for  _ time _ . "The circus. It was visions—foul magic."

He was finding that if he gripped at his own body, kneading at his arms and pawing at his neck, he was more and more quickly grounded. It was still some time before he was convinced Cobra wouldn't move. "We must appease him," he remarked, wan and watchful of the slave. His soul, he'd said; he would consume it. There was no doubt in the Northlander's mind. How easily the beast had trapped him in that memory; how easily he could keep him there if he wished to. It wouldn't take long for madness to take hold. Even now, he couldn't be sure, couldn't be sure. "We must, until we can work out how..." How, how...? How to extricate Keht from Cobra? How to slay one without the other?   
  
A painful grunt dismissed the thought. With a tenuous trust that his godling was deep in slumber, Sig now watched the guard, and saw in him something familiar—something that made his breathing slow and had him pushing himself up to sit. Irfan was fearful. Terrified, and carrying on all the same. So like a boy, an unfamiliar sword in his hand, defending his homestead.   
  
"Here," he offered vaguely, seeking out some of that earlier confidence. "It is a dark magic, but magic all the same. My people have healers, sorcerers, who deal in such things, and we might summon a few down from the mountains with a little gold." The slight slap of his palms on stone echoed about the room; he crawled to Cobra, now, to tug the gag from his mouth and to set about trying to dress his limp body with his discarded robe. "Nearer would be better. You southerners, do you have such shamans?"

 

IRFAN -

 

Irfan gave the man a disturbed look but it was not one of disbelief; as much as he spoke of his disdain for Cobra’s claims of being a seer, he had never seen him in the act. Witnessing the horror was quite convincing, though it did little to equip him to deal with the problem that lay before them now. He started by pulling the gag from Cobra’s slack lips so he wouldn’t choke in his unconsciousness.

“You want to journey  _ across _ the desert?!” He spluttered incredulously, looking at Sigvard with horror. “Are you insane?! Following the coast is hard enough! Only tribespeople or entire convoys can do it and live, and Hamad would never equip us for anything other than our mission to the Capital!”

It dawned on him briefly that Sigvard might assume he was capable of desert dwelling simply by the colour of his skin. He set his jaw and let out an annoyed grunt with the realisation. “The Navanese cross oceans and navigate coastlines,” he explained gruffly, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the well-populated harbour that lined Navan’s shores. “I don’t know the first thing about crossing a desert! We’ll die!”

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard did his work with as much grace as he could muster: Thick and trembling fingers tugged Cobra's shift the right side out (he thought), and there was a tenderness about the way he cradled his head, his shoulders, his body as he pulled the thing over him. As if not to wake him. More than that; it was a special care, a holy reverence, ordinarily reserved for the dead. He spotted a wrinkle at the curve of his chest, and smoothed it out.   
  
"I asked you about shamans, boy," he muttered lowly, "not how well you can manage the desert." He walked on his knees across the roughened stone to find his own robe in a heap. "We cannot trust Urd and we cannot trust Keht—we must find someone with knowledge of these things. If you know of none nearer than my homeland, we have no alternative." Seeming to get the hang of dressing, at least, he covered himself with the cotton thing; the fabric was scarcely whiter than his skin, now, which had gone paler still and sickly with the recent fright. "A straight trip through the desert is fastest, but we might instead go up along the coast and then into the mountains. Or we might take a ship to the Northlands and then hike south, or we might convince them to come and meet us in the Capital, if our offer is generous."   
  
The hulking creature had returned to his godling's side; he bent to collect him in his wide arms, and tried desperately to put out of his mind how lifeless the slave's body felt in his embrace. He didn't know who would wake—Cobra or Keht. But it was worth the risk of closeness, he felt; worth leaving him unbound. Pushing himself to his feet, he intended to make his way to the slave's quarters. "We'll eat—I need wine. You'll quit your girlish hysterics, too, Irfan; you ought to have a clear head."

 

IRFAN -

 

Irfan clicked his tongue at the address; he was hardly a 'boy' compared to Sigvard and he'd wager that they were a similar age. The arrogant blond didn't seem to see the bigger picture, that seeking out a shaman was absolutely useless if in the process, they died in the desert. With a frustrated huff, he took to agitated pacing as he watched the man tend to Cobra's limp body so carefully. It was vexing to see the brute acting so gently when he had been so violent and out of control earlier in the day. And yet out of control he still was; in mental madness, this time, instead of with his fists.   
  
"We don't have shamans," he snapped, scowling. "Navanese worship money more than we do some deity. If you want fire gods and chanting rituals, you'd do better in the Capital. They brought their religion with them when their ships arrived on the other side of the coast."   
  
Dressed in a shift now, Cobra stirred, making a quiet sound as he rolled over onto his side, curling up. Perhaps his unconsciousness had drafted back into the safer realm of sleep but in any case, he did not wake up. Still, the sight was calming, in a way.   
  
"I am not hysterical," Irfan sneered, though he still spoke in a furious whisper with one wary eye on Cobra. "I've seen things that would stop you from sleeping. And I know more than you, so shut up and listen! You think Hamad won't send spies to make sure we are going in the right direction? To poison us in the night for defying him? You won't serve your god well if you are  _ dead! _ ." The word tasted foul on his tongue. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he sighed. "We have to go to the Capital. We have no choice. Perhaps the priests would know something, but I don't see how you could safely get a message to any Northerners and have them arrive in time to be of any use. The journey could take weeks." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

So it seemed to be some bizarre southern tradition, to make a competition of horrors—first Cobra, and now the guard, crowing about what he'd  _ seen _ as if the world wasn't rife with tragedy and violence. They were too accustomed to the palace, Sig thought. For too long, they'd surrounded themselves with fat ambassadors and Dukes with pristine skin that had never been touched by blade or fire. They'd grown comfortable in the idea that they were the only ones to suffer, fine, fine; the slave and Irfan had made a bond of it, at least, and seemed to find some solidarity in misbelonging in this luxurious place. Sigvard would not correct him now. He would not compete. But it did cement his thinking of the guard as a boy, naive and fragile, after all.   
  
And a boy was not worth heeding so carefully. The Northlander let silence hang a little longer than he ought to, as he strolled down the wide corridor, rucking Cobra's body higher against his own so that he could turn his nose into the curl of his still-damp hair.   
  
He was cooing at him. Pushing his lips to scarcely touch the shell of his ear, he told him about the lazy, easy, constant things in the world; everything opposite to that ugly, frenetic vision. He reminded himself, as much as he reminded his sleeping god, that the great sun was setting. There would be the smell of jasmine, soon, and the wind would come off the water and over the terrace, shrugging its way past the dozen makeshift drapes in the slave's quarters to wash his welcome bed. There would be calm for a little while.

At last, pushing his way through that heavy door, he tightened his embrace and moved his mouth from Cobra's ear, staying hushed, as if to keep reality a secret from him: "We'll go to the Capital," he murmured. "We'll write to the sorcerers in the mountains—if we don't have the wits among us to get a message out safely, we certainly don't have the wits to kill a king, so we'd be fucked regardless. We'll write to them." Reaching the bedside, it was a heavy, jarring drop to his knees. "It may take weeks, yes, if they agree to come." It was almost a strain to keep himself as gentle as he did, laying his godling's body among the many plump cushions. "But we may have weeks afforded to us. Kingslaying is not a quick thing, and this Keht creature has been kept subdued for years. We must try to delay it until the sorcerers come. If they will."   
  
There was a moment, as he came up to kneel again, that he watched the rise and fall of Cobra's chest. He swayed away; he made to stand. But he couldn't manage it. Every muscle of his wracked body wanted to sink into that bed, and his harried mind couldn't think of a reason not to. So he clambered in, and wrapped him with his arms, and laid his heavy head on that rising, falling chest. "I need wine," he complained again in the direction of the guard. "Have the servants bring wine."

 

COBRA -

 

As if he could somehow sense the change in the man's attitude, Irfan's expression soured. Their bizarre bonding experience hadn't quite done the trick to make him like the man's company, especially when he insisted on behaving like such an obtuse ass. "Fine," he snapped, grating his teeth. "I'll tell them to send up food and drink. He said he wanted meat," he commented, casting a wary eye at the napping slave in Sigvard's arms. "I'll also have Hamad's servants prepare a caravan and gather some mercenaries for the journey, since you wish to leave so imminently." Judging by the man's tone, he was very confident that such necessities would not have even occurred to the brute.   
  
It would not be until much later, after Irfan took his leave and did not return, that it would become clear that he had spited the Northlander. The tray the servants brought to Cobra's room had all manner of meats, and camel's milk, but no wine.

 

As is responding to the smell of spiced goat jerky, Cobra finally stirred from his deep sleep, unfurling his limbs and stretching with a self-satisfied whine that gained an edge of confusion as his ass ached. Opening his eyes blearily, he furrowed his brow as he reached down to feel himself, casting Sigvard with a quizzical, concerned glance. Surely he had not fucked him in his sleep; the man was stupid, but not terrible in that way. Yet he was clean, too, and he could feel the dampness in his hair. As he sat up and looked around, memories of the events of the past hour slowly began to creepy back into his mind. Shaking his head with a frown, he made a beeline for the meat.    
  
"I'm so hungry," he frowned, speaking only after he had devoured two slices of roasted pheasant and half a cup of camel's milk. "It's strange. And where is Irfan? He was here just a moment ago, wasn't he?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

The guard's absence brought welcome quietude, and Sigvard was able to pretend for some minutes that peace would last. He did not sleep, but listened to his godling's breathing, and smoothed his calloused fingertips over cotton and soft skin, and smelled the blooming jasmine. After a time, begrudgingly, he rose. He set about bandaging his wound again—broken flesh was pink and raw, and so he expected good healing—and did his best not to think of what that monstrous thing had said about  _ bonds _ .   
  
He was sitting at the low table when Cobra awoke, picking miserably at the offerings. When the servants had come to deliver it, he'd demanded  _ wine _ in every language he knew the word for it; but they'd only stared at him oddly and hurried out, and he had no hope that they would return with something to put him at ease. Fine, fine. He would find some way of rewarding Irfan for his pettiness later on.   
  
For breathless seconds, he watched the slave; he couldn't be sure which beast this was, Cobra or Keht, not from the animal hunger with which that little body sought out a good meal. So he stayed quiet, although the wariness on his face was obvious. Until it wasn't: Hearing the man speak, at last, his face was twisted with  _ relief _ and ecstasy and the visible strain of keeping himself from leaping across the table to knock the cup from his hands and kiss him as furiously as he wanted to. He inhaled like he'd forgotten how, like an infant choking on his own spittle.

"You were asleep," he breathed. His body lost some of its rigidity, as his lips strained for words. He seemed to realize that this was a delicate matter, and so took the time he needed to collect himself; he went on to speak low and evenly. "You were asleep for some time. Irfan—" A dismissive wave of his hand. "He has thrown a tantrum and gone. Not far." He was trying to work out precisely when Cobra's memory ended, and the effort of it was plain in his face. "Magic." Rambling. As good as a madman. "A magic took hold of you, while you slept. It wasn't for long." Meant to be a reassurance. Although those minutes had felt like hours and hours and hours. "You weren't yourself; you were some other thing. It called itself Keht."

  
  


COBRA -

 

Sigvard's apprehension confused the Urdai, making him pause in his feast. Wiping his fingers on his knee, he was reaching for a cup of camel's milk when the Northerner laid the news on him that he had been under the influence of magic. His disturbed expression only intensified as the man went on to explain that he had pronounced himself to be Keht.    
  
"Keht... died, hundreds of years ago," he frowned. "The seer takes his name when he is recognised by Urd, but this is not the same thing as  _ being _ him". Leaning back against the seat, he crossed his arms, looking away with unease as he tried to remember. Recollection of the past few hours came slow and patchy, mostly memories of the fucking accentuated by the ache in his ass. But to  _ be _ Keht...   
  
"Perhaps it was a vision," he bargained, looking back to the blond. "Some kind of waking one. I have seen some things, some times, of past Kehts. I saw one drown in the ocean by the Capital. I saw one picking jasmine in the ruins of the ancient city where the Urdai were first enslaved. Perhaps it was just something like that."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The idea did give Sigvard pause, the effort of concentration stitching wrinkles into his brow and making his chew his lip raw. These visions, they seemed to be moments in time. Not like the tree Cobra had scrawled in ochre, nor the seeing of the fiery gate. So it seemed to him, fleetingly, that the experience in the baths may have been a terribly vivid waking vision that he was somehow let in on; for that had been a moment in time too, one of many nights whiled away at the circus.   
  
Eventually, quietly, he came to shake his head. His lip was split from worrying teeth before he explained himself: "No. More than that." It couldn't have been a moment in time, not like the other ones, because it had been  _ Keht _ drowning, or picking jasmine, and there had certainly never been any fucking southern prophet watching little Siggy jerk himself under the circus stands.   
  
A small noise of grief was let out from him. He desperately didn't want to recall, word for word, second for second, that awful experience; he didn't want to relive the perversion of his memory, the horrific truth masked by childish ignorance and years and years of happy nostalgia. He didn't at all want to touch the cold, stark loneliness that had closed around him like suffocating smoke when he realized Cobra was gone from him, replaced by that wretched thing.   
  
Of course, with fingers twisting into the fabric of his robe so that the rest of him would be still, he did regardless. "More than that," he repeated. "It spoke to me. It said this bond," he shrugged his shoulder, "it was his, too, and that it would eat my soul if I broke it. It—it, it manifested..." His lips and tongue contorted, looking for the necessary words in the common tongue but not finding them.

"I saw the circus. I saw myself, a boy, under the stands. Those nights—you, I saw you, and your father, I think. Another tent I don't remember. None of my own memories. Or they were, but twisted. It said it had been watching you, all that time. It said you were owned. Your father." His skin went chilly. He kept working towards saying it; he did remember, word for word,  _ the man who whored his son. _ He kept trying for it, and falling short. He couldn't manage. "It knew what your father had done to you, it had seen it all."

  
  


COBRA -

 

He had been reaching for the cup when he said it. The camel's milk seemed like it would be easier to stomach in that moment, then suddenly it seemed like he wouldn't be able to stomach anything at all. His hunger, so ravenous before, left him.    
  
Mud. Kerosene. His skin crawled with the ghost of his cheek being caressed and he snatched his hand away from the cup before he knocked it over, burying his fists in his lap as he shrank back into the chair. "My father," he repeated, jaw clenched. He had never said quite so clearly what his father had done. Sigvard had made it quite clear that he had never set foot inside the night tent; he was too stupid to hide it. Feeling a chill run through him, Cobra was struck by the terrible feeling of  _ absence _ , of being unable to recall what this 'Keht' had shown the other man. He had had visions, yes, sometimes even ones that could be recalled in a series of flashes and symbols, but never a void, not like this.

After a time, he remembered to draw in a breath. "If it knows me so well," he reasoned quietly, "why don't I know it? I met the Urdai on my way to Navan. Why didn't I feel anything then, why was I so sure I was not their seer, yet now it is all but certain?" His voice rose in pitch as he spoke. He couldn't help it. Clearing his throat, he grimaced and bit back helpless tears. "I don't like this," he whimpered, holding out his arms. "Sigvard."   
  
The embrace he pleaded for was interrupted  by the door opening without a knock. Of all people, Hamad entered, looking around the room with mild surprise as though he had never been in this part of his own palace before. Of course, Cobra was always summoned to Hamad's chambers when he still had the brand. There was never a need for the Duke to slum it in a smaller bed.    
  
"You," he spoke up once he had looked around the room, settling on Cobra. "Have you betrayed me? Found some way to send word to your people?"   
  
Cobra raised his eyebrows. "W-what?"   
  
"The Urdai have been spotted moving towards Navan," Hamad narrowed his eyes. "They don't come round these parts at this time of year. They should be fishing along the coast to the east. And you," he turned to Sigvard. "Irfran tells me you want to send word for some shaman to meet you in the Capital. What are you planning?"

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander lurched forward, utterly graceless, when he recognized the arms begging to be around him; scrambling for his godling, he scarcely cleared the table's edge, and one of his elbows knocked the cup of camel's milk and tipped it all the same. A clatter; a puddle of white froth mingling with the oily fat off the meats. His embrace came around Cobra's waist without gentleness, his thick arms collecting the slave's body and hauling it up into his lap even as he fell, now, his ass colliding hard against the floor.   
  
Huffing with exertion, or distress, or whatever it was, he pulled the man close. Then closer, still. There was the weight of Cobra's arms on his shoulders, tight around his neck. The wetness of his cheek on his own. He didn't try for comforting words—he knew he had none—he only spread his fingers wide to stroke his back and sides and bring a little warmth to him. He didn't think to stop when Hamad entered the room, nor when he went on and on.

They'd been betrayed. Irfan, that bastard, that wasp; he'd given them up. Sigvard's first answer was a grunt, a turning away of his face to push his lips to the cloth at Cobra's shoulder. The guard hadn't told him all of it, then, but what was to say he wouldn't yet? Better not to be caught in a lie. Better to get out ahead of it.   
  
"I plan to kill your king," he started, voice low and rough and masked by his greedy position in the crook of his godling's arm. They must not be separated, he decided. Above all else, that was imperative. "But this thing has been complicated—there's a magic in this place, in your halls. Urd brings it. Cobra has been touched by it, and me, too. Visions and things." Too dangerous to clarify, he thought. He gripped the slave tighter. "We must go away from Navan, but the Urdai may follow. We must find a sorcerer's help to put an end to whatever curse this is; Irfan has said your people are shit in these matters, so I intend to summon a witch down from the mountains to join us in the Capital and put some end to the hex. We can't get on with any kingslaying until this is done."

  
  


COBRA -

 

The man shifted a little in the rough embrace, wriggling with a faint noise of complaint to get comfortable, yet not so much as to lose the reassurance of his touch. The broad expanse of his shoulders, the thickness of his neck created a comforting shelf for his cheek and he grimaced at the sight of the Lord who had  come into his room so freely. Well.  _ His _ room, still, he supposed, a trail of thought which began to scratch at the back of his mind, not unlike the scab itching at the sole of his foot.   
  
Hamad listened to the Northlander with a pinched expression, downright snorting at the proposition of summoning a witch. Navanese through and through, he had never really taken to the mysticism that made a home in the continent. Fire worshipping fare was for the Capital, and the tribespeople... well, they were all dismissed as  _ nadameer _ , so what they did was of little consequence unless it served him directly.   
  
"Irfan said the urgency for the caravan had something to do with you behaving strangely," he squinted at the former slave, pacing closer. The Urdai man bare his teeth in response, looping his arms around Sigvard as though he might be challenged to break apart from him.   
  
"Get out of my room."

"It is  _ my _ room," Hamad corrected him swiftly, completing his thought from earlier. His eyes flicked to the mess on the table. "Though you seem to be doing a fine job of destroying it."   
  
"And am  _ I _ yours?" Cobra asked, spine stiffening as his rose up on his knees, Sigvard's face grazing his breastbone. "You struck the brand."   
  
"Meaningless," Hamad waved a hand with sneering confidence. "You still belong to me, Cobra. Or is it Keht, now? Is that why you summoned the Urdai?"   
  
Cobra grimaced, hands gripping Sigvard's shoulders tightly. "I didn't summon them," he ground out.    
  
"Well  _ someone _ did," Hamad countered. "Sigvard? You seem to have ways to communicate with outsiders. Did you bring them here?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

In wary silence, the Northlander watched the exchange—his only protest coming in the form of a small grunt and a knitting of his fists into Cobra's robe as he straightened up, lest he stand up fully and leave him. So like a child, clinging to his mother's skirts.   
  
There was a twinge of pain in his shoulder, a stinging complaint from the healing brand under his godling's tightening grip. He said nothing of it. Thought nothing of it. Too preoccupied with what Hamad had said,  _ 'you still belong to me,' _ and all the complicated things that came with such a simple declaration. He huffed. Remembering what Cobra had said about  _ consuming _ him. Remembering what Keht had said about a curse. Wasn't this so much like a curse? He couldn't be sure; he'd never been cursed, he thought, or perhaps he'd been cursed all his life and couldn't tell the difference. Was it Hamad, then? The target all this ugliness. And they were just caught too close.   
  
He was still working it out when the Duke addressed him, and so his voice was distracted and soft in the folds of Cobra's shift. "Piss." He shook his head. Curled his arms tighter. "Urd can fuck himself. I have no interest in bringing his people here." Nevermind that he certainly  _ didn't _ have ways to communicate with outsiders; he couldn't write so much as his own name, and had no gold to pay someone to ensure a message got where it was meant to go. He had hoped that Irfan might have been some help in the effort of getting a sorcerer down to the Capital. Bastard.  _ Wasp. _

"It's magic, I've said," he carried on, louder, seeming to shrug off some invisible nuisance. "He comes by magic, with magic. We'll go to the Capital, we'll be rid of it, we'll get your task done. But you'll remember your only covenant is with  _ me _ , hm?" Blue eyes watched the man, neither his head nor his body nor his attention turning from Cobra. "The brand is struck, as he said. You only have our pact in blood. You'll honour that much, I hope—if you aren't a man of your word, you ought to tell me now."

  
  


COBRA -

 

The men's insistence seemed to be wearing the Lord's patience thin. "It's not magic!" he snapped with a grimace. "Magic is an illusion; trickery. Visions seen while the mind is under the influence of... ugh,"he trailed off with a disparaging gesture at the cabinet stocked full of poisons, drugs and tonics. "And you know nothing of my  _ pacts _ ," he sneered. "You think I have only one? No wonder you so nearly signed away your country's fealty with a half dozen hidden contract clauses, posing as some ambassador."   
  
Cobra frowned, his grip on Sigvard's shoulders relenting, if only out of confusion as he turned his head towards the Duke. "Another agreement?" he asked, puzzled. A sinking feeling in the back of his mind seemed to assure him (if such a word could be used for this thing) that it was true.   
  
"Yes," Hamad drawled, snapping his fingers as he circled around the table. Evidently, some servants had been waiting on him in the hall. Now they entered and set about cleaning up the mess of meat and milk on the table as the lord took a seat, unperturbed. "So it seems I have covenants with  _ both _ of you. Fitting, yes? It should be me who holds the cards, after all. I  _ am _ a man of my word... I am not sure if the same could be said of you two  _ nadameer _ ."

Cobra's lips bent into a thing smile, cupping Sigvard's face in his hands as he glanced down at him. His movements felt calmer somehow, slow. "Is that true, usurper?" he asked casually, once finger tracing Sigvard's cheek bone although it was clear that the comment was aimed at Hamad.    
  
While the Duke didn't take offense, the plain-spoken word set his teeth on edge. "It is."   
  
"If you say so," Cobra chuckled, placing a kiss on Sigvard's crown. "I can't help that my presence draws him here," he said softly. "We are... connected."

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Laughter. Even with the kiss, it burned him. None of this was funny. It was all miserable and confusing; Irfan's betrayal, and Hamad going on about secret covenants, and now, most of all,  _ laughter _ . Hot coals in his hair and on his shoulders. He pushed his forehead to Cobra's chest, heavy, and rocked it where it sat. It was so much easier when the man was afraid and trembling—that, at least, was clear—but this strange grace, this talk of connection, it was all too much like it had been in the baths. And so doubt plucked at his mind like a hungry little thing: Was it Cobra, still? Or had that dark magic swept him up again?   
  
When he opened his lips, he meant to beg him, to tell him the strain of following along was much too much and that he would like to throw Hamad out on his ass. In the last moment, throat snarling on the words, he thought better of it. "I want to go away from this place," he whispered, hardly privately. It took him some attempts to articulate why. "It isn't safe." It wasn't  _ comfortable _ , anyway, and they were one and the same to him now. Turning his cheek to Cobra's chest, he assessed the Duke with a bleary look. "The caravan, then, have you arranged it? As Irfan told you. Will it be ready by morning?"

 

COBRA -

 

There was a heat to his breath when it pushed out of his lips; slow, deliberate. He arched his body, fey smile still lingering on his face, pushing himself languidly up against the man who so desperately wanted him to be incomplete, to be less of this fated combination of Cobra and Keht and Cobra and Keht again until the lines between them became blurred and uncertain. Hamad, too; on edge. His pride was threatened. He didn't like losing his upper hand. The covenant kept him safe, and he was lucky for that, because Keht was often hungry.   
  
He grimaced as he watched the servants carry the spoiled meat out of the room, rising to his feet with a slither of skin and cloth against a ruddy Northlander face. "It will not stop him," he lectured, looking down at his hands and stretching his limbs as if to test the length of them. The very way he held his spine, shoulders back, neck drawn high, it was as if he were Cobra in his very worst of moods, yet his expression was too calm, too confident. There was no feral challenge in his eyes even when he held himself like that. and perhaps that was what Hamad found the most alarming when he regarded his former slave. Current slave. Current  _ nadameer _ .

He turned to Sigvard with a scowl and clicked his tongue. It was easier to look at him. "Of course it will be ready by morning. And you and Irfan --  _ yes, _ Irfan, he said you would protest -- can both steal away into the desert and be gone far, far, away from here." He was eyeing Cobra when he said it. The man was undressing now, shedding his robe for a set of fine silk costume pants in a brilliant orange, like those he would wear at dinner parties.    
  
Cobra ran his fingers through his hair with a grimace. "Urdai aren't meant to cut their hair," he grumbled aloud, but he held no accusation for the men in the room. The man who had started him on cutting his hair was long dead now. "If they do not behave," he smiled, turning. "I will make them fuck again. It was funny. They are like dogs. Everything bonds if you force it."

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Apprehension tensed Sigvard’s body and stilled his breath, as he watched Cobra change clothes. That insidious doubt, plucking away. Knuckles going white in his robe. Cheeks going red. And then it was all so terribly clear to him, and his shoulders slumped, and his face went slack in something very, very far from  _ relief _ . Hopelessness tore up his insides. It felt right to mourn.   
  
“I only touched him,” he explained. Begged. He was mindlessly shuffling towards the slave’s body, aching in its absence, tipping forward off the cushion to come to his hands and knees. Like a dog. “Why? Why take him again?” Before, the beast had said it had been the fucking. It had wracked the slave too much, he’d said, and so he took him. But touch, touch alone, was that now enough? Or was it just by some whim? Urd was getting closer. And his power, stronger...? He didn’t understand any of it. Helpless confusion made anger burn in him, but he remembered the consequence of anger.   
  
“Give him back to me.” Kneeling, now, supplicant. “Please, please give him back—I only had him for a moment. He was afraid.” Blunt fingertips dug into stone tile, as if it might bend to him. “Let me have him, let me comfort him.”

 

COBRA -

 

He cooed at the begging with an unsettlingly well-acted guise of sincerity. “I never truly left him,” he smiled, stretching out his hands. Beckoning regardless of how afraid the big man was to draw near. “And you, you delicious fool, you run from the knowledge of my ways. You are scared to do what needs to be done. Not that I complain,” he trailed off, wandering over to the cabinet of poisons and perusing the shelves with mild interest. “This body is young and his taste of fire did not burn him, for once. None of the skin hurts to move.”

Hamad’s apprehension grew as he watched Cobra act so much like a stranger. He looked to Sigvard, beseeching him for answers. “This is the magic, you say?” He asked, uncertainty growing in his voice. “This is the curse that has taken him? Surely it is some kind of madness. He has killed before, you know. He has—“ he stopped at the sight of a raised palm.

“Come to me,” Cobra beckoned, plucking a vial from the shelves. “Come. This used to excite both of you, did it not?”

 

SIGVARD -

 

Lips opened to explain; to tell Hamad, frantic, that it was madness and magic both—one brought on by the other. Urd was coming closer, and there was this wickedness. Wasn’t it clear to him? Nevermind the killing. They’d all killed before, one way or the other. But Sigvard had no hope of convincing the Duke now, not with a few urgent and ineloquent words, not while under the beast’s watchful eye. It had other intentions, and the nature of its discipline was still too fresh in the Northlander’s mind. The visions, visceral. He saw them against the black with every blink of his eyes.   
  
They would talk later, him and Hamad. He would find some way to convince the Duke to send a message up into the mountains. For now, it was better to appease the walking wickedness.   
  
So he pushed to his feet, naked soles on stone, and went to him. Terror tempered by the small comfort of being near his godling’s body, puppeted though it was. His gaze darted down to the vial. He recognized scribbles on the top as writing, but that was as far as he’d get; a better hint was the wretched thing’s talk of  _ excitement _ . Slowly, like warning, he shook his head. “I won’t fuck him again, I won’t fuck Cobra.” It was fucking that had made things all wrong to begin with. “I did, and you took him. I won’t.” He  _ couldn’t _ , he didn’t think. Fear corrupted him. Looking at the southerner now, all strange posture and strange words, there was something grotesque about him.   
  
“He didn’t remember,” he went on, rushed. “He’s asleep, while you do this? He doesn’t see it? He didn’t like not remembering. Will you...?” A hesitation. Was it better for him not to remember, after all? To do these things and not witness them. He couldn’t ask. He only wanted to ask. “He doesn’t see?”

 

COBRA -

 

Both men in the room were afraid; he could smell it on them. Yet it affected them in different ways; while Sigvard's fear stirred him up into a bundle of frenzied nerves, Hamad was simply ill at ease. Queasy. Cautious. It was he who had the pause of thought to interject with the correction. "He means the poison."   
  
Cobra's lips curved. "I do. I am not so interested in fucking; this body has already been defiled enough for five lifetimes. And I had him long before you fucked him. Either of you." His eyes flicked to Hamad as he turned the small vial of heartsbane over in his hand, leaning back against the cabinet. More begging, more pleading from the big one. It was only natural. It was not Sigvard's fault that the questions stirred up bitter realities.    
  
"I do not have what I need to let us coexist in waking moments," he groused, baring the bottom row of his teeth. Pulling the cap from the bottle, he beckoned the Duke closer with a crooked finger, watching with a sneer as the man accepted a drop of heartsbane on his tongue and stepped back with a shudder as the icy chill flooded his veins. "This one was kept from culture. Even I was confused when my eyes opened, in the mud, thousands of miles from home. The land of the goatherds. And worse. Much worse."

"But you love me, don't you?" he inquired suddenly, turning to the man with the bottle still uncapped. "You've worshipped this body since you were a child. You'll take me to the Capital, to that den of thieves and murderers. The ones who think they know fire." He smiled, holding out the bottle. "Take it. Remember, just one drop."

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard's face soured, watching the vial, looking very much like he wanted to knock it to the ground. And he might have done, if he wasn't terrified. He didn't want heartsbane. He didn't want to be  _ more _ aware of all these goings-on and his helplessness within them. He wanted all of this to be further away, less hurtful, less dire. He wanted  _ 'wine, wine,' _ in four different languages. He wanted to be asleep. Like Cobra was.   
  
He shook his head at the offer, watching the man, wary. It didn't need to be said that he held no love for him. It was clear in his rigidity, and the roughness backing his voice. "Why?" He didn't understand. He didn't fully  _ want _ to, but there was nobody else to do it. Hamad and Irfan, the shits, refused to even believe what they were seeing. "The Capital—what's for you there? Why take Cobra? Why now, and not years and years ago?"

 

COBRA -

 

"Take it," Cobra insisted, a growing coldness in his eyes. "I am too old to deal with fools. You will get a clear head or I will  _ show _ you things." His voice dripped with the threat, watching as the man finally relented. He took a drop himself, afterwards, breath hitching as the chill ran down his spine and through his limbs. Taking a slow breath in, he grinned at the exhilarating sensation of the drug working through his veins.    
  
Turning, he was not surprised to see that Hamad had used his heartsbane-induced clarity to flee the room, the soft soles of his feet silent on the tiles. He laughed at that; fitting behaviour for an usurper. Not this one, though, turning back to the beast. He had been a warrior more than once in his life, and he loved the mortal shell he now called home. Even if he did want to run away, he wouldn't.   
  
"I had wounds that needed to heal too, you know. I have seen atrocities even greater than the life of this little bending acrobat. And I have... things, thing that were taken from me in the capital and I expect may be there still. I want them back." Glowering, he turned his head to the balcony, setting his jaw at the sight of the ocean shimmering in the distance. Foul thing.

"The real question," he remarked, fixing Sigvard with a deadpan stare. "Is how will you serve me? Will you be obedient to your god? I am the only one who can give you Cobra, after all."

  
  
  
  



	12. The Witches' Arrival

SIGVARD -

 

The heartsbane came like a cold sweat. Like ice held to his skin for too long; an aching, unwanted chill that burrowed deep to raw nerves and made his jaw set and his stomach seize up. Nothing like the delight and indulgence of his first taste of the stuff. Only a grating reminder of his place in the world that reddened the whites of his eyes.   
  
He heard it all with perfect clarity,  _ wounds _ ,  _ atrocities _ , even as every one of his breaths seemed to freeze the flesh at the back of his throat. Silent, he wandered back to his place at the table. Things in the Capital? Maybe those same things he needed for Cobra and this Keht to coexist, to be awake at once; maybe not at all. He wouldn't ask. It didn't matter.   
  
When the subject turned to loyalty, the Northlander answered with a grunt. He smeared his sweating palms—fever-hot, still, even with the drug—on his garment, and turned his gaze to the thing across the floor. An instant to size the distance between them. He could run if he needed, he thought. Or chuck the table at it. It would be easier if he was naked, and so he began to shuffle out of the shift. A plan for self-defense, all predicated on the idea that the wretch couldn't reach his mind if it couldn't reach his body. An unproven and idiotic idea, but this was the way of the man.

"You are no god," he muttered, freeing himself of clothing. "No god at all, much less my own." For all the horror of the visions, he hadn't relented the point, and wouldn't now. Lying would have been pointless and obvious regardless. "You give him to me only to take him away again after an instant. You pervert my mind. A god doesn't make his people suffer in this way." And now it wanted to go to the Capital, to make it somehow whole again? The gleaming city had been Sigvard's main hope; far from Urd, and with priests, at least, if not his homeland's magic. Now, though, he would be taking this ugliness exactly where it wanted to go. To what end? To make it  _ stronger _ ?   
  
Clarity, finally, was coming to him. He could draw even breath, and in the heartsbane he could smell the northern air. "My loyalty is to him, not you. You want to claim him forever, hm? I won't help you do it. It would be more of a mercy to kill him outright." New energy worked through muscle and bone. It was good there'd been no wine. "I'll stay, I'll watch him close, but I won't serve you, creature. I won't take you to the Capital."   
  


KEHT -

 

_ You are no god _ . He paused at that, eyes narrowing as he regarded the man with a bitter, smouldering expression. After a long moment, he scoffed. "And yet I am immortal," he drawled, turning his attentions back to the cabinet. Rabbitroot. A pulse quickener, more likely to cause restless legs than any true feeling of adrenalin.  Tonics to make one feel the very air creeping along the surface of their skin. Maybe. That could be funny. It was hard to be funny in the face of such insolence, such disrespect. Keht was tired of being disrespect. He missed the taste of blood.   
  
"The gods cause endless suffering," he lectured, pulling more bottles off the shelf to inspect them. "You are just a fool. And you will lose him for it." Their eyes met again, Cobra's blue gaze hardened with determination. "I will get to the Capital, even if you drive me into the arms of Urd. I would rather be choked and cowed than unavenged."    
  
Grimacing, he pulled the stopper on a vial of copperweed essence, relishing in the blood-like smell. "So what will you do, Sigvard?" he asked unkindly. "When you wake up in the morning and your love is gone?" 

 

SIGVARD -

 

The brute was beginning to understand. In the image of the man rifling through the many poisons, he saw Cobra. In his words, he heard him. The same strength—or imitation of it, anyway—the same pointless threats. It was comforting. He’d learned to manage the one of them, more or less, and he felt he could do the same for the severer version.   
  
This accounted for the relaxation of his posture, and (after an investigative pause, to ensure the creature wasn’t joking) the broad, broad smile that put long-lost delight back into his eyes. “You’ll leave in the night, will you? Hm?” A pause to suck at his tongue, hunting for more traces of the heartsbane. Finding none. “You think I sleep heavily, cunt? I look to you like a man who hasn’t kept a watch?” This Keht had insidious and maddening magic, yes, but Siggy had years and years of sleepless nights watching for ambush or minding crafty little thralls with thoughts of escape. He liked to imagine this had them evenly matched.   
  
“You would have to get by Hamad’s men too; you’re only a mad slave to him, I think. And your Urd, your silly people—they have no hope of sieging Navan. But you get out, hm, and then...?” Blue eyes dropped pointedly to the man’s stomach. “You’re not fit to travel alone. He’s become lavish; he eats and sleeps too much in this place. You tire and you hunger quickly, all ‘ _ meat _ ,  _ meat _ ,’ I’ve seen it already. You wouldn’t last. No, I don’t think I’ll wake alone.”

 

KEHT -

 

He was angry, now. Keht sighed, setting the vials down on the counter and turning to pace towards the larger man, his eyes lingering on the thick swell of muscle underneath the skin of his arms. He knew the sound the flesh would make if he tore through it with his teeth; the taste. These memories, stained vivid crimson, were as bright in his mind as they had always been through the aeons.    
  
"You mistake my words," he simpered, leaning forward gamely. "The body will be here, yes, but your love will be gone. You would be wise to heed my warning. The last man who did not went mad and burned himself in a fire." He scoffed unkindly, recalling the visions that had come to him from the cold and lonely shadows at the bottom of the ocean along the eastern coast where the sand was stained black by volcanic rock. He had had a good body, then, and in light of the challenge he faced now, he mourned its loss all over again. The long, sinewy limbs, the toughened muscle, the calloused feet from years of wandering the desert. A full-blooded Urdai who had dedicated himself to visions from his early years. A True Keht. The new one had known suffering, but not combat, and it was troublesome.

"My hunger is not related to sustenance," he informed the blond with a sneer. "Perhaps I should take another bite out of you, hm? If you will not keep your covenant with me, your flesh will do."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Quick on his feet. No camel's milk to spill, this time, as he scrambled up and away to put distance between him and the thing. The door on one side of him, the terrace the other; escape, either way. He was safe, assured, even if his fists were opening and closing and opening again, even if his shoulders curled like a cat's might.   
  
"I have no covenant with you," he hissed. "You're an infection. You'll take him if I serve you and you'll take him if I won't." A flush on his fair skin. Heart hammering in his broad chest, limbering his muscles and making him fight-ready. He only wished he had a spear. "He's gone already. You won't give him to me."   
  
A sudden, swelling grief tore up his guts. Blunt claws scraping the inside of his ribcage, seeking to get out in shrieking violence. "You won't give him to me! And if you do, you don't—you don't look any different, I have no way of knowing. Was that you, before?" Keht had never left him, he'd said. "Pretending? Pretending to be him...?" A pointless question. He couldn't trust it. "He's gone regardless. You've taken him." More of a mercy to kill him outright. It was beginning to cross his addled mind. "Your threats and your cruelty are of no use to me!"

 

KEHT -

 

"Yes," Keht ground out the words. "It is my right." A cold aura of resent emanated from him, in everything from the hard edge in his stare to the set of his shoulders. Despite his immortality, yes, he was weak. He was weak in this body. He was weak for being so long separated from the sources of his power. Weakened by transgression committed against him. For a dog like this to scorn him so gamely, it was no surprise.    
  
A hiccup of laughter burst forth from his lips. "I do look different," he corrected the man, slumping against the cabinet as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. "You are just too blind to see it. Your mind is closed. And he is not  _ gone _ ." Growing frustrated, he snatched up the bottle again and  found himself wishing he had some of that mortal wine. Best not to take more of this, not if it could kill his flesh all over again.

"I used to be a sight," he lamented, draping himself over the end of the bed. "Skin of orange ochre. My hair, blue; a river. Not even I could have foreseen the evil that would arrive on these shores."

 

SIGVARD -

 

It was no use. Words, words. Sigvard should have known better than to engage this wicked thing in conversation in the first place; he should have kept him gagged. What could he believe? Cobra's mind and body was corrupted by magic, a weed that only promised to sink its winding roots deeper and deeper. It wouldn't give him up. He was gone, then, all the same.    
  
Fists tightened, fingernails cutting at his palms, where Hamad's blade had been, where the slave had plucked out a dozen shards of glass. These things, just hours and days ago, now feeling like years and years. Gone, gone. Time and space twisted by this rotten fever-dream.   
  
The Northlander looked to the heap on the bed and saw ugliness, made only worse by the description of some alien, monstrous visage. He grunted. He would not be slow and surreptitious, now, in approaching the body among the cushions—he was not  _ subtle _ in anything he did. It was long, quick strides to close the gap. No chance for the beast to get up. The whole weight of Sigvard's body was thrown on him, meaty hands wrestling to take hold of his wrists and most of all his throat, his tender throat, to crush into silence. Skin on skin, he remembered. The thing might bring him madness. He would risk it; his mind was fraying regardless.   
  
"Leave him," he gasped through the struggle, terror and fury mixed. "Leave him, or I'll kill the both of you!"

 

KEHT -

 

He should have seen it coming. Could have, if he had been trying. If he had not grown arrogant in the face of Sigvard’s ignorance. Now by merit of brawn alone, he bested him, throttling him with as much passion as Urd had, the first time, all those years ago.

He tried his best to keep his hold on the mortal’s consciousness, flashes of grim memories making themselves known in both their minds, much to his chagrin. There were some things that he did not necessarily want the Northlander to see. The blur of the sun beyond the surface of the ocean as he sank down. The kids of a jasmine blossom against the cheek of a young boy. Swirling red sands. A bare foot struggling to gain traction on a floor wet with blood. Urd. Like a totem come to life with his smooth, dark skin, wide mouth and serious features; he doubted that Sigvard even knew Urd’s face.

He lost his hold, the struggling dropping suddenly into unconsciousness as Cobra’s body fell limp. Mercifully, it drew in air still, chest rising and falling slowly once Sigvard’s hands had left him. And, just as he had before, the man curled up in the actions of sleep, drawing his knees closer to his chest.

“Sigvard,” he mumbled, half awake as he shifted in the cushions to get comfortable. “It’s cold...”

 

SIGVARD -

 

Silence, finally. Darkness, finally—the black of closed eyelids, pinched tight in futility against an unintelligible flood  of visions. The low thrum of the ocean, whining desert winds, were replaced with the sound of his own heaving breaths over silence, finally,  _ finally _ .   
  
Sigvard was the image of a madman, all ruddy skin, bloodshot eyes open in a flash, the whole of him covered in a greasy, sickly sweat. His empty fingers ached. He'd let go, of course he'd let go, but he couldn't remember when. It was only meandering guesswork that brought his mind back to the here and now, and even then, barely. There was his name, but he couldn't trust it. His lungs ached with held breath, desperate to hear or see something that would prove definitively that the curse was lifted, if only for a little while, but he heard and saw none. Keht had called him blind.   
  
There was the sudden and ugly realization that it didn't matter whether or not there was some sign, whether this was Cobra or the beast that took him. He'd been ready to kill him. Was ready to kill him, still. And ready to die, most of all, if only by losing his pitiful mind forever. All for nothing, really, and nothing was what he had now, wasn't it? Alone, or maybe not. Loved and protected, or maybe not.   
  
His great body came down, crawling among the cushions, face contorted with grief and determination, like an infant hunting for the most public place to start wailing. He was on his side, facing Cobra. A heavy arm around him, pulling him close; thick fingers winding in the curl of his hair, hair that wasn't meant to be cut, he remembered. Pushing his wide, wet face into the slave's chest. Voice thick with a mess of tears and snot. "Stay, stay." It was all he could think of. There was no beating Keht at this horrible game. He couldn't manage it alone. "Please," he croaked, "Cobra, please, you must stay."

 

COBRA -

 

His instinct was to press his face into his shoulder but the sight of Sigvard, all red-faced and disheveled, made the man pause. The chill inside him raised up goosebumps on his skin and when he closed his fist, he realised that he was holding a vial. Heartsbane, he expected, though he did not remember taking it. He shuddered as realisation dawned on him, lips pressing into a tight, queasy line before he parted them to speak. "It happened again, didn't it?"   
  
It was difficult to keep track of events. The ache around his throat; he had caught glimpses of the throttling, but before that... little more. He had been wandering the desert as if in a dream, maybe, the swirling sands serving as a hypnotic distraction. "I feel so sad,' he said uselessly, frowning as he pressed a hand to his chest. "It aches here even more than my throat. Sigvard... what did he say? What did he tell you?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sig shook his head at the question, at first, his lungs lurching with a helpless noise that stuck somewhere in his throat. So much had been said. How could he express it all now? And what if he only had fleeting minutes before Keht took him again, or what if he’d never let him go at all and this moment was nothing more than lies?   
  
His whole body strained in concentration. Made so much more complicated and confusing now that twice, today, his mind hadn’t been his own. His fist tightened in Cobra’s hair, and his other arm snaked around him; he found his lips for a kiss but couldn’t hold it with his own face all twisted in weeping. He’d settle for desperate closeness.   
  
“He means to take you forever,” he rushed, “he says it’s his right. He wants to go to the Capital. For things he needs, for vengeance.” That hadn’t hardly been all. Hamad the usurper, and blue hair. And it was somewhere in the midst of the Duke talking of some secret covenant that Cobra had gone from him in the first place; did he remember that? The Northlander’s wracked mind slipped through memory, and his mouth came along in clumsy explanation of all he’d seen. More and more disjointed, making less and less sense. Pulling their bodies closer and closer, even if it would scald him later.   
  
“He takes my mind,” he groaned, setting his jaw to silence himself. But there was still the awful breathing, trembling, tearful hiccups. Like a boy again. “I can’t match him, I’m not fit for magic. I want to summon a sorcerer down the mountain. Will you allow it? To root this infection out.”

 

COBRA -

 

Forever. His right. Cobra struggled with the thought. He wanted to be angry; he'd tormented other slaves for weeks for minor slights, something like this should have made him furious enough to tear the earth apart. Perhaps, in retrospect, his torture had been a form of entertainment to stave off the madness of growing neglect. He wanted to be angry, but the sadness was all-consuming, drenching him in lament with reminders that came in flashes of the water's surface. The creak of a barge on the water. Sunlight through red cotton; a trap.    
  
He sniffed, lip trembling. Sigvard's sorrow was infectious, and he fought off tears and pushed his body closer, breath hitching, running his fingers through the fine blond hair over and over again. "Yes," he answered, nodding through his doubt. Could a sorcerer from the North do anything at all for an Urdai god? Cobra didn't know. "Yes, bring him. We can... we can make it 'til then. This," he paused, fingers tracing the bruises at his throat. "This made it stop, didn't it? The Kehts always had bruised necks. There has to be a reason." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander’s bleary eyes followed Cobra’s fingers, and after a moment, he nodded his understanding. The choking had been such an ugly thing to him. Backwards tradition, senseless violence, some sadistic perversion of the whole succession of Urd bastards. He thought it might have been what brought Keht’s curse to the surface—too much ignorant dabbling in magic in these last days. Now, though, it was some faint hope. It did make a sort of sense to him. Choked and cowed, the beast had said.   
  
A long breath. Unsteady, but not so utterly helpless as before. The miracle of hands in his hair and the wisdom of his little god. “He put visions in my head when I did it.” Drawing a hand up to smear the mess from his face, he wiped it among the cushions and curled his heavy arm over Cobra’s waist again. “Things you’ve said. Drowning, jasmine, and more.” His open palm found a place in the small of the southerner’s back. “He could easily drive me to madness, I think, if he expects me to throttle him. But I will find ways to surprise him. When it’s safe. I’ll snuff him out when I can and bring you back up.”   
  
His cheek came to Cobra’s to feel the heat of it, and he could manage now to turn his lips to catch the man’s fiercely, drawing him in with the hand still knitted in his hair. Arms and legs tangled, the heat of his skin against the thin costume the creature had picked for himself, both their breathing jagged. He’d done all but confess. When would he next have the chance?   
  
The kiss drew off into littler ones, to the corners of his lips, his cheek, his brow. “I do love you,” he whispered, cautious more than anything. “You know this, yes?”

 

COBRA -

 

He could only manage a ghost of a smile. “He doesn’t make my body stronger, does he?” He asked, but he already had a strong feeling that this wasn’t the case. “It shouldn’t be too hard to catch me.” The words felt like an omen of some kind. It felt strange that he needed to say them at all. He started at the sudden attention, hesitating before he returned the abrupt kiss. The confession. Less strange, but just as surprising. He hadn’t thought of Sigvard as the type.

“I do know,” he answered, feeling warmth creep into his face as he shifted in the man’s embrace. ”I... care about you too, Sigvard.” The omissions of the words felt like a yawning chasm and his face burned for it. Grimacing, he rolled over into his other side, pulled the man’s arm over him like a blanket’s edge.

“I am not good at this,” he muttered, drawing his knees up. “Some things are better felt than said. A lot of words lost meaning to me in that tent.”

 

SIGVARD -

 

After all the damned things to have been said that day, Cobra's stumbling affection scarcely made him blink. Sigvard's heavy body settled in among the cushions, curling around the man, weaving fingers, pushing his nose into the curl of his hair. "I don't mind it," he dismissed, sounding almost gruff. Reciprocation wasn't the point. "I only—I want you to understand me, that's all." Before Keht reclaimed him and sent him off to wherever he spent those agonizing moments, feeling so much like years. "You won't be left alone." Unless the bastard killed him. Or any other of these southern snakes did.   
  
He fidgeted, squirming to find comfort in the bed. It would be some time before sleep, and then it would be fitful. He would wake for every little thing, lest it was Keht fleeing or coming at him with a knife; and he would dream it all, too, in his drowsy paranoia.   
  
"Keht wishes to go to the Capital," he murmured, in quiet reminder to himself. "We shouldn't take him where he wants to go, I think; it's safer for you here." He seemed to be making up his mind as he spoke, and his self-doubt was apparent. "Even though Urd comes." A beat of silence to mull over his tongue. "He couldn't enter the city, surely, unless Hamad wished it? We should keep you here, I think. Until we have a sorcerer."

 

===

 

"Ridiculous!"   
  
The Northlander's roaring voice filled the slave's quarters, righteous fury cracking against stone walls, only to come back at him in a sharp and painful echo. "I see your tricks!" He stood at the cabinet of poisons and things, directing a hardened stare and the full extent of his anger towards Cobra beside him. Two vials were close to breaking in his fist. "You mean to make a fool of me!"   
  
It had been some weeks since the creature Keht had manifested itself. In that time, Sigvard had felt his own helplessness; the knowing that the beast fought constantly to return, the confinement to Hamad's estate, the threat in the waiting Urdai, the faithlessness of the Duke and his men and that wasp Irfan and all of their damned secret machinations. He had felt his advantage, too. Daily sparring to the point of exhaustion. His hands about his godling's tender neck, granting them a few more days of peace. The brand, now healed to a grotesque scar. A message from down the mountains, the shamans writing that they desired to come and see this old god-thing and cure it from the world. And a tentative peace with the guard, at least, after a brief and near-bloody scuffle.   
  
It was a fragile balance. There was the vague sense that the lot of them were growing madder and madder, and there was the depression that came with night or too-long silence; but generally, in his view, little had changed from the frenetic mix of delights and tragedies that had constituted  _ normalcy _ in his first days of knowing the slave.   
  
On this night, for example, he was quickly losing his temper to spelling.

Sig's lips went to a firm line, as if he could barely keep himself from spitting venom at the man; cradling the two vials to his chest, he turned on his heel to storm towards the moonlit terrace. He'd been told these poisons were  _ nettles' milk _ and  _ kniferoot _ . He liked the 'milk' ones, and 'bark,' and 'lock' and such things, because they all ended in a sound that seemed to him to be good and strong and hearty; and he particularly enjoyed that the scribble relating to that sound resembled a sort of weapon. Imagine his indignation, then, to be shown the label for  _ kniferoot _ and to be told that that selfsame beautifully violent scribble went unspoken.  _ Silent _ . It had to be a trick; it had to be a cruel joke on Cobra's part to have him say the wrong thing at the wrong time and to be made to look like a fool. Well, he wouldn't have it.   
  
So he took his rage to the balcony (tearing down only one or two makeshift drapes this time, as he'd begun to get the hang of navigating them), and pitched both vials off the side of it.   
  
Relief, then.  _ Profound _ relief, like a yoke off his shoulders, putting goosebumps to his skin and a flush to his cheeks. A deep breath opened his wide chest, but the spark in his eyes was not owed to the shattered glass and cork somewhere among the rocks and sand. He watched the horizon. The docks. Among the sails of blue and green and red that gave the bejeweled sea its name, there was a lone broad white canvas being gathered at the mast; below it, moonlight fell on the flats of a dozen swaying oars.

He was at the edge of the terrace, leaning into the stone rail, bettering his vantage by mere inches. Still, even here, he knew it was no merchant ship. Too squat, too small—built for raiding, useful for the quick transport of small parties. His palms dug into stone, his knuckles white, his lips parting around involuntary and unintelligible coos. A dozen bodies on the deck stood, one after the other, as the boat was docked. Dark garments, long cloaks, did nothing to conceal the relative smallness of their frames; they were not warriors, not hunters, among the mountain people. They would be mostly women, likely.   
  
"It must be," he announced quietly to open air, finishing a thought or perhaps only starting one. "We must be there to greet them." In only an instant, his urgency was back in the room somewhere, and he turned towards it now. "Hamad can't be trusted. He can't be trusted to do it right."

 

COBRA -

Choked. Cowed. He understood the words now. Every time he spoke, he was reminded of the bruises around his throat. When he glimpsed himself in the mirror, he saw the shadows under his eyes because he was afraid to sleep. Fucking could have taken the edge off. Even fucking his own hand could have taken the edge off, but Sigvard was afraid of that, too. He'd seen so much of Sigvard over the past few weeks that the sight set his teeth on edge.    
  
He ate less, groomed simply in a way that did not require a mirror. He gave up his elaborate costumes for simple cloth coveralls and tunics in white, black and red. A prophet indeed. Whenever he found himself erring towards orange or blue, he took his hands to his throat again. If couldn't bear it, Sigvard did it for him. It was the only intimate thing between them now. Sometimes he wanted to drive his thumbs into his eyes for it. He understood, now, how he would have grown to hate Urd too.    
  
Urd. The Urdai tribe had arrive on the outskirts of the desert, just outside Navan. They did not set up camp by the main road, rather, the patch of land that was nearest to Cobra's room along the outer wall. Cobra could not see them from the balcony for the city's defenses were in the way, but he saw his face every night in his dreams, warm brown eyes unblinking beneath the edge of his woad-stained turban.

The presence of the Urdai set the Navanese on edge. The soldiers who had first approached them had been chased off with spears as expected. Over time, a trickle of merchants dared to get close and they were met civilly, trading for food but not much else. Despite their lack of intent to invade, Hamad had taken it as an omen, grilling Sigvard for updates on the travels of his homeland sorcerers every other day, as if he'd know.    
  
Irfan couldn't get close to Cobra if he tried.

Cobra had been wondering if a drop of kniferoot would be worth the pain just to  _ feel _ when the oaf had started on his new, meaningless tirade. He watched his throw the valuable poisons out of the window with little more than a turn of his head. Choked. Cowed. He thought of Urd's serious face and the shifting red sands, wondering if they would burn when they touched his skin. He hoped so.   
  
"Have they arrived, then?" he asked listlessly, his apathy painting a clear picture of just how much confidence he had in the talents of these foreigners. He rolled over on the bed, curling around a pillow and hugging it close with enough force to strangle it, were it alive. "Go get them, then. Start this futile game."

 

SIGVARD -

 

"Enough," Sigvard muttered, his low voice thin with downcast spirit at the fatalism that greeted him. He was rooting among a heap of clothes on the floor as he spoke, his growing collection of garments that weren't too small or too fragile or too vexing to put on—almost exclusively cotton things, like the loose pants he selected now to pull over his thick legs. "I won't have you out of my sight." It needed reminding, even now. He didn't like that it needed reminding.   
  
Half-dressed, which was exactly as dressed as he'd get, he lifted his meaty hands to let out the little knot of hair at the top of his head and do it up again, neater. Blunt fingertips pushed life into his thickening beard, past his first knuckle now. He even thought to pinch colour into his cheeks. Pale, still, in spite of the southern sun; owed to Cobra's décor to shut the world out, which the slaves hadn't made any attempt to touch in all these days. Cowards. The slaves, and Irfan, and Hamad most of all.   
  
"Up, up," he urged, warmer than before. Making some attempt at kindness, softness, levity; but nonetheless nearing the bed, ready to carry the man, pillow and all, if he refused him. "Come, we'll go together."

 

COBRA -

 

He saw through the act, grizzling and rolling over at the attempts to coax him away from his sulking. "It hurts to walk," he lied uselessly, the struck brand on his foot long since healed away to scar tissue. Feeling hands come around his sides, less fleshy than they used to be, he hissed and squirmed, dropping the pillow and twisting in an attempt to push the man's face away from him even as Sigvard attempted to carry him.   
  
"Fine, fine!" he yielded angrily, wriggling free and standing on his own two feet, stalking forward to the door quickly to keep some space between them. Even at the height of his popularity in Hamad's court, he had never known such constant surveillance. It was maddening. Folding his arms tightly across his chest, he walking quickly through the corridors leading to the garden paths which would in turn lead down to the docks.   
  
"What is this way we're supposed to meet them?" he groused, recalling Sigvard's complaint. "What are we supposed to do?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard, the mutt, kept heeled in the corridor; it took considerable effort to shorten his natural gait so that he wouldn't outpace the vicious little thing leading the way, but he managed in his usual clumsiness. He'd watch Cobra's back for the journey. He'd see the space between them, and the tightness in his muscles, his arms, so much like a snake coiled for a warning strike.   
  
"You aren't meant to do anything but be docile." It was in this way, he thought, that Hamad could not be trusted; particularly because it was his coffer that would suffer for the whole arrangement. "If you show them impatience, wickedness, these things—they will not be kind to you. They have come some ways to help. We should show them gratitude." He mulled his tongue, then. Wondering if his vengeful godling could be trusted any more than the Duke. He couldn't remember when he'd last seen warmth in him, or grace.   
  
The private docks, like the gardens, like the long corridors, were largely empty, infected with the unnatural lifelessness that had fallen over Hamad's estate in those last weeks. It was the same silence of razed villages, of plague. The sinister quiet of harrowed and helpless creatures curling in on themselves in the dark to wait for disaster to exhaust itself, or otherwise to welcome death. The visitors, fittingly, broke the spell. Coming up the path, led by a guard with seemingly all the world's wearies on his face, the dozen cloaked figures clamoured softly amongst themselves; there was chatter, pale fingers pointing this way and that to the boats and the gardens and the buildings, and the occasional giddy laughter of having feet on dry ground after a long journey on the water. Beneath them, the sweep of their leather soles on stone could be heard even at some distance, a whisper like rain, now louder and louder.   
  
It was Sigvard, of course, who would first break rank. A few great strides put him ahead of his little master. The sound of rain came to a gentle stop.

" _ Hvall _ , sisters." His speech, his posture, were awkward. A crude imitation of the reverential welcome he'd seen shamans given in childhood. "We are thankful to have you." He heard  _ Sigvard _ whispered among them, as they came to the natural conclusion, and his gaze tracked the crowd of faces as each of them dropped their hoods. Young things, all. Most younger than him, and even the oldest among them—a woman of white-blonde hair and eyes like ice—would have been much the same age as Cobra. He was not discomforted by this. They would have each been sickly by the age of five, as the mountains' magic drew them to their calling, and any sense of childhood would not last much beyond the pilgrimage to the foothills, where they would be offered up to the witches who came before them. In this way they were younger, yes, and so much older, still.   
  
In the eldest's hands, he saw a short staff; a crude thing of unrefined metal and studded with half-rough gems. It would have been the finest thing they had, and so he thought to speak to her. A figure interrupted him. Separating itself from the rest. A man, young too, dark-haired and sharp and with scarcely a beard to speak of. His hazel eyes leveled on the soldier, first. "Sigvard." Relief; he spoke kindly. "I am Eilif. Mother watches me." Here, he gestured to the woman with the staff. "Mother watches all of us."   
  
A moment, as the great oaf worked it out. She couldn't have been; too close in age. Ah: "An apprentice?"

The man, this Eilif, wouldn't answer. He'd turned his holy sight to Cobra. He saw his plain garb, plain hair, plain eyes—his eyes, his eyes. There was a fixation on his eyes, only not quite; he seemed to watch the dark circles beneath them. A long quiet from him. It was a curious stare, uncertain, like trying to guess whether a figure on the horizon was a tree or a man. An apparent indecision fell over him, and so he lifted his gaze to the man's proper. "And you, you are the boy? The afflicted?"

  
  


COBRA -

 

"Docile," he repeated the word with a scoff. Choked. Cowed. Still, the notion that  _ he _ was the most likely among them to cause upset with the distinguished guests grated at him. Far more likely that it was Keht, or even Sigvard himself. "It isn't  _ me _ you need to worry about."    
  
He heard them before he saw them. He heard other things, too, the gentle bleating of goats. A soft, soothing sound of cow bells in the distance. He thought he saw the flash of a pale and smiling face, maybe, in the blink of an eye. A grubby, silver ring.    
  
These people were paler still and twice as strange. Unsettled, he hung back, more than obliging to let the bigger man make his introductions in his mother tongue. Inside him, he felt curious eyes open, glowing blue all the way to the ends of their eyelashes. Antsy, he squinted, as if that might change things, carefully shifting his weight from one foot to the other. When the young man revealed himself, he felt an otherworldly thrill at the words.   
  
_ Mother. It has been a long time since I have heard that. _   
  
His fingers flexed, drumming in a neat line before one hand swiftly flew to his neck and drummed the bruised flesh there instead.

_ Mother. Let me speak with them. _   
  
He squeezed, knowing now to be harsh and brutal with himself from the start, the shame of committing such a shocking act in front of watching eyes long since past. He grimaced, buckling over, persisting until his eyes began to water and the whispers of  _ Mother _ left his head. Just a few moments, but the timely intervention had done the trick. Drawing in a slow breath that was raw at the edges, he straightened up slowly, taking his time in regarding the stranger just as much as he had done him. His wary scowl had already answered long before him, but he did bother to, all the same.   
  
"It is not an affliction," he croaked. "Sickness can be cured."

 

SIGVARD -

 

A knot was tied in Sigvard's guts, seeing Cobra's grotesque ritual, watching the way his body contorted for air, hearing it strain and heave—but he didn't dare move from his place, and with his lips in a solemn line, he watched all the same. Even afterwards, his arms hung limp. He wouldn't touch him. Pity and comfort were unwelcome, he knew; somehow as detested as the act itself. Wasn't it strange? He couldn't place precisely when their bond had rotten out from the inside. The first night with Keht, maybe. He'd held hope since then, but it could have been a mistake.   
  
There was some curiousness among the sorcerers, but they too kept still and watchful, swaying only with the sea breeze washing through their heavy cloaks. If Cobra's remarks came as any surprise to the apprentice, it wasn't evident. His face was even and kind and soft, and it promised, in Sigvard's mind, the peace of the timeless mountains.   
  
Eilif would turn to the guard, then, and bid him to take all the women to their waiting quarters, and to see that all the heavy trunks and things still on the boat were brought up to them before the end of the night. The whisper of rain, further and further. The tap of the eldest's staff on stone as she led her daughters away, once, twice, again. Hazel eyes lifted to Sigvard's, waiting: "You will not leave us?"   
  
The giant, useless thing frowned sharply. He took a breath to puff his chest, his voice too loud for even the open air. "I will not. I'm not meant to—I cannot." Vague, and simple, and nearing indignation, but the dark-haired stranger seemed solidly convinced all the same. He nodded, and beckoned the three men to make their way back to the estate, putting himself neatly between the man and his master.

"Tell me, boy," he murmured, his gaze on Cobra's clothes again, his hands and his neck. "What is it, to you, to be cured of this thing?" Watching his eyes. Finding nothing, of course. "To be free of it entirely? To sleep?" Pale fingertips slipped from underneath the rich blue shroud to indicate the ugly mess of bruises that ringed his throat. "Or to be granted a moment's peace without resorting to this act of crude magic?"

  
  


COBRA -

 

The 'boy' grated on him, just like most things grated on him these days. And of all things, he did not expect to be asked why he did not want to be Keht now that he knew the true ramifications. His blue eyes flew to Sigvard's ruddy face because he could stop himself, flinching and looking away quickly as he turned and started slowly back towards the palace. He didn't answer, after that, picking a different bone to chew one.   
  
"I am older than you," he said, his voice still wet around the edges from the throttling. "And this thing inside me is older than all of us. Boyhood is something I lost long ago."    
  
The open air instilled strange feelings in him, these days. Whenever he was bathed in light or a breeze grazed his skin, it was as if he could feel Urd's gaze on him. In his dreams he had seen him sat before the edge of the desert where red sands blended into the soil and beach washed up by the ocean, and he had not moved from that spot since. Like a totem.    
  
They were supposed to be together. That was the implicit understanding that plagued him now. That was why he balked at the feeling of being a god.   
  
"Who is Mother?" he asked abruptly, lifting his head. "It recognised her name. I don't know the Northlander religions."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Wind hissed through the fig leaves, the cedars, the blooming jasmine. Eilif seemed to measure his steps under a watchful eye. His words, too. "Mother is Valdis," he murmured. "The one you saw before."   
  
"Your master. Yes?" The thought burst past Sigvard's lips. "The woman with the rod-thing." There was strain in his face, a stitched brow and pursed lips. As vindicating as it was to have guessed right, it was just as soon worrisome. She'd gone with the rest; why? Shouldn't she have been here, in place of her apprentice? The hulking beast watched the stranger, and if he was making any effort to hide his skepticism, he was failing utterly. Eilif, in kind, watched him back. A smile on his thin lips was familiar to Sigvard. An amused thing, full of pity.   
  
"I learned my craft from her, yes," he nodded. "Just as your masters taught you to be a good soldier, Sigvard. And haven't you fought alongside them? Or were you all alone against the horde?"   
  
This did the trick of shutting the man up, if only because it  _ sounded _ like a riddle, and he now had to spend some time working it out. So he yielded with a grunt, and watched some unknowable place in space and time as his feet carried him ever forward.   
  
The shaman brought his body closer to Cobra's, step in step, as if they had a chance of being free from further interruption. "There are many Mothers in the hills," he offered, "and each would have a Mother before her, until memory, until Olrun came down the mountainside with the first magic." There was a shuffling under his cloak, as he held himself in comfort against the night. "There would have been Mothers in the old city. And when your people were a proud people, there would have been Mothers who communed with them."   
  
Content as he was to answer, it was clear in the sorcerer's face that simple education was not his aim. Gentle, hushed, he pressed: "You hear it, then? It speaks to you?"

 

COBRA -

 

Valdis. The name did not ring a bell for Cobra; he truly hadn't heard of any Northlander legends during his early years beyond the mountain ranges. The circus was a collection of stolen, deformed and shackled peoples. His father had been the most unholy person he had ever met. He glanced over his shoulder and saw her cloaked figure, but she was gone. He felt as though she could have been staring at him with the same unwavering patience as Urd, just moments before. Perhaps he'd missed it in the blink of an eye.    
  
It seemed Sigvard didn't know as much about these people as he claimed, which may have been why he was so anxious to please them. Or perhaps not; they mentioned hordes. Cobra felt his grasp of the situation flapping like a flag in the wind. His shoulders relaxed only slightly when they reached Hamad's threshold and he slipped inside, staying close to the cool plaster walls.    
  
Olrun. A glimpse of teeth in the the early morning light. Laughing, happy; bread broken in roughly wrapped hands. Yes, he'd heard that name before. With a sinking feeling, he kept it to himself.    
  
"Only sometimes," he murmured. "More often I just see things. When it gets bad, it is as if I am sleeping. I don't remember. Sometimes, things that it knows, it is as if I have known them all along. I've seen the old city, when it burned. Before, too. Fields. I don't remember any Mothers. Just goatherds; stories."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard's steps grew quicker and quicker, reaching the estate's halls; his little god's quarters were home to him now, a comfort that he couldn't manage to go long without, and he was eager to return. Passing a slave, he took him by the arm. Rushed whispers to tell him to alert Hamad of the visitors' arrival, and to bring along something lavish to eat to the shamans' quarters, and to Cobra's, too. And wine. Wine went without saying; it was now a near-constant.   
  
The shaman would watch the soldier's broad back, the gnarled bite on his shoulder. But he spoke to Cobra still, in softness. "You have suffered greatly." A long breath, as if relieved of some burden. "It is those of us who have suffered who lure these spirits, for they have suffered too. There is no magic without agony." There was a play of shadow and light among the muscles of Sigvard's back, as he heaved open the wooden door. "In this way, you can understand it. There will be no peace until you dwell in each others' suffering—and in this, we will do what we can to help you. You can know the creature, then; you can contend with it. You can make some sense of these stories."   
  
Hazel eyes wandered the quarters, then, though seemingly more in awe than repulsion, marvelling at quarried stone and fine fabric and gold, all things that would not be among the mountains. He spoke distracted, but to Cobra, still: "Do you understand that this is the way of things? Do you see it?"

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra caught the edge of Sigvard's whispered and grimaced, wishing he hadn't. Of all the people he would have rather stayed fair from these affairs, it was Hamad, who still assumed to own him even when the brand was struck. The treachery that had been committed by the trio, Irfan included, was sticky like tar. It didn't follow the clean cut rules of slave arrangements. It was honour bound, bathed in blood. He wished he hadn't called on him.   
  
"If I am to know it," he started cautiously, bracing himself for Sigvard's over-reaction even as he spoke. "Then I must speak to Urd. The tribe waits for me at the desert's edge. They know more about the prophet Keht that any other, even a sorceror's apprentice." He sighed, picking up the pillow he had been pulled away from earlier and using it as a support under his chest as he draped himself over his bed.

"I should be in the desert, anyway," he mused aloud, despondent. "It is my home."

 

SIGVARD -

 

A strained noise caught in Sigvard's throat, predictably, at the mention of the man; but he let his little master finish all the same. His relationship to the idea of Urd had become complicated. Night after night in that damned bed, the both of them sleepless, Cobra with his terror and his thoughts and the soldier looking for meaning in what little Keht had told him. He explained, now, to the shaman: "It's Urd that brings this magic. It only started on his approach. But it said—" Night after sleepless night, and still he couldn't be sure. His lips struggled for the words. "Keht seemed to have some disdain for him. So I don't know how it relates, these things. If it does."   
  
There; Eilif's full attention was stolen from all the strange material things around him. He nodded to his countryman. "Good. Good, Sigvard, thank you." The simple praise seemed to have the effect of making the warrior take breath and hold it, a flush across his cheeks and chest. Wanting to say more, but having nothing.   
  
The shaman followed the object of his curiosity, taking a seat among the cushions as near as he could to Cobra's head. He looked down at him. Thin fingers laced in his lap. "We see your people, when they come to stay among the foothills. When they confer with the goatherds, when they are assaulted and some of them taken as thralls. We see their fires; we pray for them. But our Mothers do not commune with them anymore because they are a broken people. Consumed by what was taken from them."   
  
His eyes tracked what he could see of the bruises. In the corner of his vision, there was Sigvard, edging nearer. But the man seemed to trust him, at least barely, and didn't dare come too close.

"You will certainly speak to Urd," he went on, "but you must not go to him like this. You are weak. Your flesh is tired and your mind is splintered. You will not survive what he and his misguided people demand of a long-awaited Keht." A hand lifted from his lap to settle on a cushion nearer to Cobra. He seemed to want to touch him, to trace fingertips over tan skin, but understood his place. "Besides all this, there is no man who knows more of Keht than Keht. I wish to speak with him."

 

COBRA -

 

A heavy sigh escaped the former slave at the bigger man's insistence that Urd was the source of the problem. He was wrong, he knew he was wrong as innately as he knew that he and Urd were connected and his people belonged in the land where they could thrust their hands into the red desert sandf. However, he could not explain what was right in order to contest the falsehood, so he gave up.    
  
He watched Eilif come closer, a barely perceptible tension filling his body as he did. Though he didn't let the apprehension show on his face, he watched the witch's hands like a hawk, wary of being touched. He only grimaced when the man described the Urdai as broken, not because it was false, but because it was true. A flash of the blood, of the burning, and acrid smoke, came to his mind. His heart sank when Eilif made his request, shrinking back against the cushions.   
  
"He stays away for a time after the choke," he answered, stalling as he spared Sigvard a glance with a frown. "And I would prefer not to, if Hamad is coming."   
  
"As if he would come here," Irfan's scoff announced his presence, leaning against the door frame as a pair of slaves brushed past with food and drink to set upon the table. The platter was mostly meat with sparse fruit, as Cobra had taken to eating little else these days. He even ate it dried, which was considered peasant's food in Navan.

The guard, true to his nature, cast Sigvard with a withering glance as he used his foot to push himself off the doorframe, striding further into the room with his chest puffed out in challenge. The blond man had been doing his best to keep him away, but now he was here on orders, he would not leave lightly. As if to prove this point, he plucked up some spice-fried goat and brought it to the sickly man on the bed, coaxing him to take the food. Cobra did.   
  
"... If it is Irfan, I can stand it," he murmured after swallowing, sitting up on the bed. "But I still don't know how to bring Keht about so soon. Perhaps it better just to wait."

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

The sight of them. Eilif, Cobra, Irfan, all. A little cloister on the bed, huddled around his godling's warm flame, and all that was left for Sigvard was scorn. His skin hadn't lost its redness. Had he done something wrong? He couldn't place it. It wouldn't occur to him that telling Hamad of the visitors was his mistake—he was fearful the shamans wouldn't stay if they didn't see their gold soon enough, and it was the Duke who was paying, as the soldier had nothing to his name. Not now for the shamans, and not then for the builder.   
  
He held back. Watched Irfan feed him, and Eilif stand. There was a bizarreness to it. As if all time and history was catching up at once. Too much for his little mind; he turned to snatch up a bottle of wine and uncork it.   
  
"I wouldn't have you do it now, poor child," the shaman said. "Nor here. We'll need space; music, and the others, and such arrangements. We will wait, yes." Briefly, his eyes went to the platter, and then left again. From the folds of his cloak came his hands, indicating his own throat in place of Cobra's ravaged one. "There will be no more of this, this violence to yourself. We'll hold a vigil over your dreams so that you might have a peaceful sleep." He spoke to the guard and the soldier, as much as he did the would-be prophet. "The three of you."   
  
An otherworldly sound punctuated the command. A note, shrill and perfect, sung from somewhere else on the estate and carried as if for miles on the sea air. One of the women, surely. Another note from her, lower, and then a third coming high and sharp and quick as a whip's crack; finally, a long silence took the world and the room both. Until some long seconds passed, and she did her small harmony again.

The wine was in both hands, now, cradled to Sigvard's chest. He had heard this thing before; not the exact tune, but something like it, coming haunting down the mountainside. Songs to signal the happy end of a ritual; a child cured of its fever, a coming rain after a long drought. Songs for summer evenings, and for death. Turning to Eilif: "Have they done something? Some spell. Are they at work?"   
  
That familiar smile again. Warmth and pity. "No, nothing so fateful," the shaman corrected, voice hushed as if in reverence for the intermittent calling. "They've seen the Urdai's fires, I think; they call to them, as is done when they visit the foothills. They may pray, but that's all." Nor did he seem concerned, taking meandering strides to inspect the cabinet of poisons. "Irfan," he recalled, "I am Eilif. And you? What have you seen of this Keht?"

 

COBRA -

 

There it was. Child, again. With a look of disgust, the man pushed off the bed and stalked over to the table, snatching up yet more meat to sink his teeth into. As much as he made a show of it, the ravenous hunger that had filled him in the past was no longer there. His pace slowed after the first two morsels, eating normally, albeit with knitted eyebrows.    
  
The ringing notes sent a shiver down all of the men's spines. Cobra looked the most disturbed of all, enough to return a piece of meat to the plate and curl back into the seat. Irfan, eyes wide, put more distance between himself and the new foreigner, as though he might inexplicably be the source of the magic.

"I didn't want to get caught up in these things," he grumbled, though he took a seat at the table anyway. As worried as he was, he still understood that there was no untangling himself from this mess, now. He blamed the same bond which Hamad claimed still tied him to Cobra.   
  
"Calling is useless," Cobra piped up, finally looking back into those hazel eyes. "Urd cannot leave the desert. If he could, he would have come days ago. I must go to him." It seemed to be the only way. In the past, a messenger might have been sent, but the Urdai numbers were far from the horde they once were, before the Capital took their Keht and enslaved them once more. He doubted Urd would permit even a single Urdai to venture into another walled city now.   
  
The guard let out a faint grunt and a nod at the introduction, reluctant to know yet another pale face. His dark fingers drummed on the table top as he considered reaching for a bottle of wine but when he saw Sigvard with his, he decided against it.

"I've only seen him once," he answered gruffly, glancing back at Cobra. "I didn't realise right away. Sometimes his bad moods take different forms, but never like this. I have even seen him in the act of killing, and it was nothing like this. It was as if another soul filled his body. It spoke to me as if it knew me, but I did not know it. That's for sure."

 

EILIF -

 

Eilif had taken up a vial in his fingertips, and now turned it this way and that, as if only to watch the jet-black oil slip from top to bottom to top again. "We don't call to beckon them," he remarked, voice distant with preoccupation. "Only to tell them we are there and watching."   
  
So it was a taunt, Sigvard thought. Or very much like one. But he stayed quiet; recognizing, more and more, that he did not think in the same ways as these shamans and their Mothers, or this Urd, or this Keht. The bastard Irfan seemed to be the most sensible one in the room, so he eventually took up a seat at the same table and sucked at the wine like a tit.    
  
_ The act of killing _ . The black vial was deposited back, another selected in its place. The shade of sour milk, the thickness of honey. And another, and another, in lengthy silence.   
  
"Thank you, Irfan," the witch mused at last. His inspection of the cabinet was finished, he seemed to decide, and so he wandered for the long-neglected closet. "Cobra." He tried the name; it seemed strange on his northern lips, stranger even than 'Irfan' had. "What are your dreams? Are they always visions and prophecy and such things? Can you remember dreaming of simple things, as most men do—ordinary fears, ordinary delights?"

 

COBRA -

 

If the chilling song was simply to tell the Urdai of their presence, Cobra didn't see much point in it. Like Sigvard, his mind first went to taunting, although he wouldn't voice such an opinion. It seemed more likely that these strangers simply didn't know about Urdai ways. For all he knew, they had never even seen an Urdai before. If there were many different Mothers in the north, these might not be ones who dwelled close to the ruins of the ancient city.   
  
"Visions," the man answered dejectedly, although being addressed by his name rather than some infantilising nothing did take the edge off his sour mood. "I can't remember what it was like before, I have been seeing visions so long." But then he could, and he grimaced with the memory. "Before it was just nightmares, he clarified. "Nothing I'd like to dwell on. But that does not mean all visions are prophecy. In fact, it may never have been a prophecy at all. They could be memories, simply showing me places where Keht has been and they are simply the same places I intend to go."   
  
"The capital," Irfan chimed in the clarify, following along with the conversation surprisingly well.    
  
Cobra nodded. "Keht leads the Urdai through the desert,"  he reasoned. "If he is a wayfinder, then it makes sense that simply knowing the way so clearly could be mistaken for prophecy of the future.”

 

EILIF -

 

Kneeling among the heap of garments, Eilif kept quiet as the men carried on about the nature of visions; he'd seemed satisfied with Cobra's answer, and had no apparent stake in whether they fell one way or the other on the issue. Of course, the whole of it went over Sig's head. He sat on his cushion, hugging the bottle, sucking the heat of the drink off his tongue. His eyes, his thoughts, were on Cobra's hands. He wanted to push his hot face into them. He might have tried, if he wasn't sure he'd be rejected and humiliated in full view of the others. The way he'd hissed at him, before, when he meant to carry him.   
  
Over his shoulder, the crouching sorcerer turned his cheek to eye the men at the table. "The capital? You mean to go?" Before an answer could come (Sigvard, at least, was drawing off another quarter of the bottle), he spread his hands wide among the clothes. "Come, explain; and as you do, you must pick some clothes. Will you?" He stood, now, surveying the mess of fine fabric before him. "Three things. You will not wear them now, but I must have you pick three pieces. They should be furthest from each other, in the impression they give you. Some will select a wool, a silk, a fur; red, yellow, blue, and so on. A sentimental thing and a thing not worn in years. Do you understand? Three things, all in conflict."

 

COBRA -

 

"It seems like Keht will not rest until he has reclaimed what was taken from him," Cobra answered, brow already furrowed with uncertainty at the witch's actions. He had chalked up his nosiness to eccentricity, but now when the man asked him to come select three items of clothing, he was puzzled. If this was for some spell or other, it was a kind of magic that he was not familiar with, even in stories. Sighing, he rose from the table and made his way over.   
  
"Three is two many types,' he complained quietly, looking over his masses of clothes. "Two would be more suitable." Spying what he had in mind, he pulled out one of the plain cloth coveralls he was so partial to wearing in his private quarters. With a snide glance back at Irfan, he waded further into the closet's depths, to part of it that was used less and less often, these days. The slips of vermilion chiffon and silk he pulled from there were far more costume than clothes, but he threw them on top of the coverall regardless. It was the third option that gave him pause. All of his clothes seemed to be one or the other: for private, or for turning his body into a spectacle.   
  
"I suppose," he reasoned aloud, glancing warily at the piles of brilliant saffron, oranges and blues that Keht had been hoarding in the hours when his hold had been stronger. "One of these." Kneeling, he dug through the pile until he found a garment that felt right in his hands, a long bolt of brilliant orange cloth that would be used to wrap the head. "Here," he held it out to Eiliff. "This will do. But what are they for?"

 

EILIF -

 

“To tell you now would defeat the purpose,” Eilif explained simply, collecting the garments as a bundle in his embrace. “It was good of you to do it properly. Thank you.” With a last glance about the room, nothing seemed to seize his interest. “I’ll go, then, I think. We’ll speak again tomorrow—Keht will come when he comes.” He watched Cobra’s eyes in a steady gaze, then. Or perhaps the dark circles beneath. “If you feel him begin to awaken, you’ll tell us, and we’ll prepare.” Long strides to the door billowed his cloak. “You should eat, wash, and sleep, all of you; you should have the thralls change your bedding to something fresh. We’ll hold vigil. You’ll dream of nothing.”   
  
The shuffle of fabric, the creak of the door. Sigvard had stood to see the man out, and now his eyes seemed to want to follow him, as if the visitors had brought along his beloved mud and snow and woods along with them. But his useless feet wouldn’t move. The silence rubbed like thorns on him; the song, the taunt, the prayer, whatever it was, had stopped. He set the wine down, still standing, and rolled his gaze to Irfan. “Hamad knows? Will he bring them their gold?”

 

COBRA -

  
Defeat the purpose? The puzzle grew more and more perplexing by the minute, but at least the witch seemed satisfied that the task had been done correctly, such as it was. Cobra stared back at him uselessly, head lolling to one side as he watched him make his departure. "Those things are all I do these days," he sighed, strolling back to the table with the food. Those three things, and the choking, of course, although now it seemed that he wasn't to do that any more.   
  
"Hamad has even more gold than he says he does," Irfan chuckled, clearly not shy in divulging such details within earshot of the stranger. "He's not in the habit of withholding payment, so don't you worry about that."   
  
He was more in the habit of withholding the truth, Cobra knew, but he didn't voice that with present company. He simply nodded, reaching for more spiced goat. "Keht would come faster if I could just be left alone," he sighed. He couldn't help the impatience despite his belief that whatever the sorcerers would try would be ineffective. "But I suppose you won't allow it," he gave Sigvard a withering glare. 


	13. Seeking Warmth

SIGVARD -

 

The wine hadn’t had the minutes to take hold of him yet, but Sigvard’s eyes were tired and glassy still when they fell on Cobra’s face. Idiotic silence, breathing through scarcely-parted lips. He couldn’t work it out; he couldn’t trace that spite back to its source. He’d been diligent in keeping Keht away, he thought. That was all he’d been, in weeks and weeks and weeks. But now that wasn’t the point, and even if it was, weren’t the shamans so much better suited for it? All he could do was choke. And for brute protection—well, here was Irfan, wasn’t he? They seemed in some bizarre agreement to tolerate each other once more.   
  
He was long, long past explaining himself. Nuance was useless in the face of the cold resentment he’d come up against for a dozen days and nights. He wouldn’t tell him that there had never been any such thing as  _ allowing _ , not in the way he said it; one was the god, the other the man, and that hadn’t changed in all these days. He wouldn’t tell him that there’d been a time when  _ alone _ was something Cobra detested, and his presence was all he could offer, and he didn’t remember when that changed. He wouldn’t ask him how alone he meant to be, whether it was rooms away or miles and miles. Where would any of this explanation get him, really?   
  
So he’d say none of it. There was a tickle in his nose; he lifted his hand to shove it away. “I’ll go,” he muttered. A thin hoarseness to his voice, like after hours and hours of shouting. His eyes pinched, thinking of where he might take himself at this time of night. His own quarters—or the ambassador’s, he supposed—had long since been repurposed. Into the city? Away from it, maybe; Hamad might give him a camel, if he was so generous. “You want me gone, I’ll go, then.”

 

COBRA -

 

"Did I say you could leave?" Cobra's remark cut across the room, staring at the man's back. Sighing, he rose from the table, closing the gap between them and tugging at the man's elbow so he was facing him, monstrous scar and all.    
  
"You are dramatic," he murmured, without eye contact. The scar tissue was puffy and even silvery in placed where it caught the light. He reached out to trace it with his finger. "You watch me too closely, at times it feels like I am choking even without your hands around my neck. I only wish for room to breathe, for quiet, so stop looking like you are about to make journey all the way back to the Northlands."    
  
"You two haven't been fucking, I see," Irfan chimed in dryly, leaning one elbow on the table. "No wonder you're both so sour. If you'd just let me near I could have taken care of it. I haven't cared about having an audience since I was a boy." Scoffing, he finally poured himself some wine, downing the spiced beverage in one shot.

"You two would have been at each other's throats in seconds," Cobra managed a weak laugh. "Then there would have been even more noise."   
  


SIGVARD -

 

Nuance. Sigvard allowed himself to be handled, turned, inspected; but it was clear on his face that he remained unconvinced. It was too vile a thing, left too long, to be cured with a little clarification. Rotten, he thought. From the inside out. If Cobra could only take so much observation, the Northlander could only take so much bitterness, and to leave would at least have been some relief to him.   
  
The mention of fucking still put daggers in his gut. His godling wasn’t wrong, mind you—the first time he’d caught a glimpse of Irfan after his betrayal, he was roaring and eager to settle the score—but that was only secondary to the main idea. “I don’t want any fucking.” He stood where Cobra had left him, arms at his sides. “Fucking is what brought Keht about.” The slave would have heard the words a dozen times by now. He grunted, shifting his weight. “I know he’s meant to come, now, but I don’t—“ He was struggling for the words. Not for modesty, but to articulate the horror of the idea without making a fool of himself. “I don’t want it to happen like that, I don’t like it.”   
  
His blue eyes fell to Cobra’s, his lumbering body useless where it stood. “Do you want to be left alone, or do you want me to stay?” Where he might have grown furious and loud and vengeful in his confusion, before, there was now no such thing. “I don’t understand it.”

 

COBRA -

"Hm? Now that I think about it, it did  happen afterwards, didn't it," Irfan pondered aloud, resting his chin in his hand.   
  
"You don't have to fuck me, Sigvard," Cobra murmured, finding it hard to move his eyebrows. The resulting expression was oddly blank; morose, even. "But when you even stopped me from touching myself, I want to bite you all over again, do you understand?" He pressed his fingertips in around the mound of the man's pectoral muscle, fingernails leaving half moon imprints in his skin. "You are driving me into a kind of madness and I would prefer if you stopped before I get so angry that I yield to the bloodthirst that Keht brings to me."   
  
The meat. He glanced back at it with a sigh. Even now, he recalled false memories of blood, of painting his face with it, rubbing it into his cheeks like a soap. The goat bells chimed, again. Perhaps it had been goats' blood.   
  
"I wish to bathe," he murmured. "You will come with me. You can sit by the bathside or wait outside by the door, but you will not stray."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander mulled his tongue, thick and stained red from the wine. He was considering the explanation. Straightforward as it was, it was the vicious little thing’s  _ clawing _ of him that had driven it home; a pale imitation of the agony of the bite, and all the days of healing afterward. He hadn’t thought of it in too long. Keht had said something like this, hadn’t he? Of mutilating him again. If he understood, it was only barely, but it was enough.   
  
So he nodded, finally, to both requests. “Irfan,” he grunted, taking long strides to the table again. “Help me bring the wine, and the food, and things.” Waiting outside the door was no sort of option, he thought, collecting up the large platter and the half-empty bottle he’d selected for himself; he would sit at the side of the bath, if not  _ in _ it, and enjoy the luxury of food and drink. It was something to occupy his arms, too, as he pushed himself through the door to follow Cobra down the great hall. He watched his back. Memories of carrying him there and back again, like a child. He resettled the platter in his embrace.   
  
In the wide open room where every sound bounced from the water and walls and ceiling, he set his cargo on the tile close to the pool. He even thought to take a towel from the bench, the  _ civilized _ creature, to wipe his face with, lest he spoil the water otherwise; although, as he slipped from his loose pants, he realized they would have done just as well.   
  
He settled at the bathside, first, sitting cross-legged where he could drift his fingers in the water a little. They went to the meat and fruit, then, to collect a fistful and drop it in his mouth. Still chewing, he spoke to Cobra around the stuff: “What do you think of him?” His eyes read caution, curiosity. “Eilif. Does he inspire something in you?”

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra got a ways ahead of them as they distracted themselves with food and drink, of all things to bring to a bath. So be it; he was well past challenging Sigvard on his lack of decorum and there was no one with a spine left to care in Hamad's household, anyway. When he reached the bath's edge, he stripped with a fluid, natural movement, diving into the water as if it were home. It was strange that he felt so at ease swimming here when he was plagued with such grim memories of drowning in the ocean. Different rules for different bodies of water, perhaps. The salt and darkness could not have helped.    
  
He surfaced, slicking his dark locks back, away from his face. His hair had grown longer than it used to be, but it would take months, perhaps even longer than a year to get it anywhere close to the length that most Urdai hair. Still, it was getting long enough that he'd need to start wrapping his head to keep it out of his eyes, even if it was just a cloth band. He certainly wasn't in want of fabric to do the job.   
  
"Eiliff?" Pulled from his musings, he turned his head in the blond's direction. "He inspires me to slap him, I suppose, when he refers to me as a child." A hollow puff of laughter pushed out of him. With a sigh, he considered the question seriously.

"His people have magic, that can't be denied," he admitted. "Yet I still doubt that he will be able to free me of the duties of Keht. It is too old to give up so easily."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard’s chewing slowed, considering the answer. Not because he didn’t think there was any truth to it—he didn’t understand the shamans, nor the duties of Keht, nor much of anything, really, and so he couldn’t say one way or the other—but because he’d never really supposed that was the aim. To free him of the duties, no. The Northlander had resigned himself to the fact that Cobra had  _ duties _ ,  _ duties _ , long ago. All that talk of Urd, and leading his people as a newborn god. No, in bringing the witches down, he only hoped to drive out that fucking wretched corruption that made his master’s mind not his own. It didn’t occur to him that these things were inseparable.   
  
He moved closer to the water’s edge, hauling the platter along with him in an ugly, echoing scrape of metal-on-stone. Heavy feet slipped into the water, legs dangling. Another fistful of spiced meats and glazed fruit was chased with rich wine, the bottle tipped for the last of it. The whole mess was smeared onto the back of his hand, and then his thigh, and then finally (as he remembered) the towel he’d fetched to maintain some semblance of civility.   
  
”When they arrived, the shamans.” The drink was warming him, at last; he was freer and freer, clumsier and clumsier, in his thinking and in his words. “It meant to take you.” It must have; Cobra wasn’t in the habit of mutilating himself for show. “Why? Was it frightened in some way? Did it mean to do them harm?”

 

COBRA -

 

He took his time bathing, day dreaming of hair that was longer than his. When Sigvard shattered the serenity of the bathing chamber and drew closer to the water, he fixed him with a wary eye and a frown, but made no protest. Irfan, on the other hand, swore under his breath, dunking his head under the surface of the water to rinse out the shampoo lather.

“He wanted to speak to them,” Cobra answered, thinking the situation over. “I don’t think he wanted to harm them. He recognised the name ‘Mother’. Not Valdis, though. Olrun. The first one. If Keht has been alive since ancient times, it makes sense that he was there in the beginning.”

 

SIGVARD -

 

A gritty noise came from Sigvard’s throat, signalling exactly how wary he was of giving this Keht thing what he wanted, to speak to the shamans, after all. But that would be the extent of the matter. It had been near a month of hell, and if he lost hope in the sorcerers, he would be hopeless in all things—that they would be rid of the infection, that Cobra would see godhood, that he’d reclaim a little of that feverish love he’d somehow driven out in these last weeks.   
  
So he hushed himself. At the water’s edge, he eyed Cobra, and Irfan, and found them unwelcoming; so, more and more consumed with himself in his drunkenness, he pulled his intruding limbs from the water. He was meant to bathe, Eilif had said as much. But it could wait, he thought. In the interim, he’d sit cross-legged again, and pick at his feet.   
  
The Northlander counted his thoughts in silence, the sheer effort of it coming through in shallow, strained breaths. He was still having some trouble with it. The idea of staying, when there was Irfan and the shamans to do their duties, and when he was so apparently resented that even bathing alongside his little master was scarcely tolerated. He couldn’t begin to put it to words, this uneasiness, this feeling of foreignness where he’d once convinced himself he belonged. So he didn’t. He commiserated with the platter, going straight for his favourites with no thought for the heartbreak of when they ran out, and waited his turn for the water.

 

COBRA -

 

He spent some time staring at the surface of the water, the refraction of light in the ripples. In the Northlands, large bodies of water (unfrozen, at least) had been hard to come by, usually a bucket at best. The ocean didn't hold the same allure as a bath, river or lake. As he thought about his seemingly lifelong fixation with water and bathing, and the things he'd been told about the time Keht had taken over his body, a thought occurred to him and he lifted his head.   
  
"It's possible," he began. "That I am a not a god, and that the god is Keht, and I am merely a vessel feeling echoes of his power."   
  
"This again?" Irfan grimaced, laying by the poolside. In a typically Navanese fashion, he was quite godless. "Men are not gods, Cobra. They just act like it when they have enough money."

Cobra kicked his feet idly in the water, sending a ripple through the surface that obscured the quiver in his lip in his reflection but not in his face. "Would you love me still, Sigvard?" he asked aloud in a voice that was somehow tiny but large thanks to the echo of the tiles. "If I was not a god, but just a holy man?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

The slave's pronouncement came over the water, and Sigvard, cheeks full of apricot and goat and cheese, lips stained with the wine that still burned his throat, gave it careful thought.   
  
_ Vessel _ wasn't quite right, he knew that immediately. Not in the sense of something empty to be filled. As wretched and cunning and powerful as the beast was, the Northlander had long been convinced that Cobra's fierce little spirit could match it; he wouldn't—oughtn't to—be relegated to some...  _ shell _ , some servile thing, merely a corporeal body willed into action by a dark and ancient being. If there was power, he thought, they must share in it to some degree, rather than one dominating the other. For if the curse hadn't come from Urd after all, as he'd begun to wonder, how long had that terrible magic been within him? He remembered the tent, the father. Where they were made, Keht had said. And all this talk about  _ the beginning _ .

It was a mess, a story half-told, a mythos utterly foreign to him. He couldn't make sense of it, not yet, certainly not as drunk and miserable as he was; he would know more when the shamans had had their way and could translate the beast's intention. So he swallowed his mouthful, and shifted his weight, and opened his mouth to speak what he understood of it—but there was Irfan, indignant, naive. The pale warrior watched him. Wondering, quietly, why Cobra accepted such scorn.   
  
He was watching himself pick at the plate again as he answered his master's question. "I don't love you for your godhood," he huffed. "I would love you for your strength and your generosity." Half-answers and hypotheticals; there was an obvious discomfort in talking about love in any concreteness, somewhat because of the guard's presence, somewhat because he was dejected, painfully aware of how unwelcome his own closeness had become.   
  
He took a long breath and abandoned the fig he'd been considering. "But in my homeland, it's these things that make gods of men. Courage, and wisdom, and charity. I've seen these gods, Irfan—rich and poor alike." Still, his gaze did not lift; he concentrated on picking his feet. "I would love you all the same, Cobra, but I do think you're meant for godhood. Keht or no Keht. You've been strong and generous, yes?" Here, he pushed his chin in the direction of the southern soldier. "To him, of all people. You've said he's indebted to you; weren't you godly then?"

 

COBRA -

 

Godhood. He felt a twinge of something, and perhaps this was what Keht felt like when he was at his weakest, but it passed. He wasn't sure what the thing inside him intended to comment on, or if he had been offended in some way. Now that he thought about it, he wasn't so sure how to bring about Keht's presence on purpose, only to stave him off with the choking. He doubted it had been the fucking, truly, that had brought it about. They had fucked many times before without Cobra losing control of his body. More likely, it was exhaustion. Distraction. Unconsciousness acting like an open door.    
  
"My strength and generosity," he repeated quietly, eyes downcast. Was he these things? Strong, yes. The claim of generosity brought more doubt. He supposed he had been, in a way, with both of them. Not always, that was for certain, but enough times. Enough times to have made a much greater impact on the men before him than he realised, it seemed. He'd been too used to being alone to properly understand arrangements such as teamwork, friendship, romantic devotion. Cynicism has rotted out his core and there Keht had made a home.

"Cobra? Is he back?" Iran piped up.

He'd been dawdling too much in his own thoughts. Startling, Cobra shook his head. The change in the room was palpable; still laying on his stomach by the side of the pool, Irfan fixed the blond with wide eyes, like a wary cat, shrinking backwards.   
  
"That was different," he said, the quickness of the answer giving away his nerves.   
  
"It was," Cobra admitted, much calmer. "I judged them and I found them to be in forfeit of their lives. We both did. Hamad... well, Hamad probably allowed it because he saw the opportunity to strengthen his own hold on Navan. I doubt he ever cared what went on in the brothels before."   
  
Tense, Irfan stood suddenly making for the towel racks. He was suddenly very ill at ease in his nudity. "You don't know what it is like," he muttered, although it was unclear to whom. His knuckles were white when he pulled a towel tightly around his waist. When he turned around, however, he found Cobra's solemn face unchanged. A flutter of dread passed through him as he braced himself for the past to be brought up again.

"In Navan," Cobra began slowly, turning his head to Sigvard to try and gauge just how well he was piecing together the puzzle of their conversation. "I would say that being a whore is even lesser than being a slave. When it comes to having a say in what you do or who you do it to, at least. There were a number of nobles who thrived in making whores do unspeakable things."

 

SIGVARD -

 

As Cobra's watchful eyes studied Sigvard, Sigvard's, in turn, studied Irfan; he was transfixed by the guard's manner, his body, his words. He did listen, all the same. Most, he'd understood already: He'd known there had been suffering, as Irfan had been bizarrely eager to remind him at every chance of the things he'd  _ seen _ and so on; the southerners had talked of killing, too, and so revenge or some matter of self-preservation hadn't been too great a leap for the Northlander to make. It was a story he'd heard a dozen times before. A story he'd been part of just as often, in one way or another. The abuser, the avenger, or paid to fight on either one's behalf.   
  
But 'them,' the idea of more than one, this was a new thing to be hearing. Nobles, of course, of course; so it might have been that Irfan's loud resentment of men of power wasn't just because of his own lesser status. He hadn't guessed Hamad's complicity, but wasn't at all surprised by it—the rat would kill a king, so what of turning a blind eye to a thing like this?   
  
So he understood, yes. He'd caught the main threads before, and was now all hung up on the details, wanting to ask who these men were, and what they were judged for, and when exactly they were made to die and all this put behind the pair of them. He began to: "Them...?" The word was barely a ghost. "How many?" But he understood, too, the terror in Irfan's face. He recognized his pallor and the curl of his body. It was natural to want to comfort, wasn't it? Why wasn't Cobra doing the natural thing? Imagine their roles reversed. Imagine the little god going on and on now about that day in the mud and the rain, two little screaming faces, when Irfan had no right to know these things.

The soldier, unfolding his legs from beneath him, grunted in the act; louder than his whispers, as if to deny them an echo. "Irfan." He reached for the pants he had worn to the bath, and tossed them in the guard's direction. "Here." A moment's pause to search his surroundings, coming up with a bottle of wine and offering that, too, at the end of an outstretched arm. "Here, here; do you mind that he speaks of it, these things? Would you have him stop?"

 

COBRA -

 

A faint splutter came from Irfan with a furrow in his brow at the question of how many. No sooner had he opened his mouth to tell the man that counting them had been impossible, that he had no idea, Cobra cut in with an answer.   
  
"Twelve."   
  
He said it with such certainty, the guard's breath hitched in his throat and he stared at him. It was difficult to place if the number was higher and lower than the numbers he had imagined in his head countless times. It had been constantly shifting, as nightmares often did. "Twelve," he repeated in a hollow voice. The shock muted the surprise of Sigvard presenting him with the pants, which he accepted gratefully, though his slack stance didn't imply it. ".... Thank you," he said, for good measure, stooping to pull them up over his legs. He gave a heavy sigh as he glanced back at Cobra.   
  
"I would prefer if I were not in the room," he muttered. "Some days I can share the serenity that Cobra feels, some days I cannot."

Very much serene, Cobra tilted his head to one side, but he let his mouth close. Mute, he pulled his feet up out of the bath and moved to take a towel of his own, quietly drying himself. If Irfan didn't want it spoken of while he was in the room, he could give him that. A different method occurred to him as he rubbed the water out of his hair, turning to speak to them.   
  
"Keht might be able to show you," he remarked. "If he can control what he shows. Although, I am still not sure what brings him. I have spent so much time trying to keep him away that now that I want him to return for whatever the spirit man is planning with the clothes, I do not know how. I still wonder what he could hope to achieve with clothes, of all things."

Irfan seemed much more at ease with the change of subject. "Perhaps he will use them to divine," he suggested. "Like the fortune tellers in the marketplaces. Sigvard, do you know how their magic works?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Twelve. Not killing, then. Massacre. Slaughter. And were each of them equally guilty of these so-called unspeakable things, or only complicit? Sigvard let the arm that held the wine gently fall, and regarded Cobra at the edge of the water with a mix of doubt and morbid curiosity. He'd judged them. Keht had called it  _ justice _ , once.   
  
Keht. Before, in Cobra's silence, Irfan had thought the mad fuck might have returned; Sigvard had known better then, if only because the creature didn't seem to be the sort to give up a chance to go on and on. Now, wariness was creeping in. The slave's distant demeanour—fey,  _ serene _ —reminded him too much of the beast's ungodly grace. It put him on edge. He considered the water.   
  
At the idea of visions put in his head, the Northlander went rigid and pale where he sat. "I don't want to see it." There was something feeble about the remark, imploring, with the understanding that it wasn't at all up to him to decide whether or not his mind would remain his own sacred place. Cobra understood the agony of seeing memories that weren't his own, surely? He wouldn't put Sigvard through it, when words would do? "We'll talk," he went on. "You'll tell me what you remember—you seem to remember."  _ Twelve _ . Yes, he seemed to remember exactly. "Later. With him gone." A gesture to the guard. "Or drunk, or asleep, at least. We'll discuss it then."   
  
At last, the pool was empty. The mutt could bathe. In a clumsy, drunken mess, he crawled to the bath's edge and plunged himself into it, keeping himself beneath the surface long enough for the water to chill the blushing heat from the wine and the climate he'd barely grown accustomed to.

When he surfaced, it was only just. His mouth was clear to speak, and his blue eyes trained on Cobra's body, watching his hands and the towel at work.   
  
"I know some of it," he answered the guard, simply. "I've heard of Olrun, the first of them; there are fables. Though I didn't know they called their mothers—" His tongue felt fat in his mouth. "I didn't know they called their masters 'Mothers.' I know the shamans are at work in the mountains, when we do not see them, and I don't know what they do then." A beat, as he remembered: "I suppose they pray for the Urdai, as Eilif said, but there must be other things."   
  
Slowly, he began to wade in the direction of a dish of oily soap abandoned on the tile. "When they come to the villages, it is mostly for healing, and decision-making, and ridding curses, and these things. There isn't—" His brow furrowed sharply as he took up the soap dish, and he turned to regard the men across the water. "Whenever I've watched them, they don't deal in the interpretation of omens and prophecy. They'll talk to spirits, most often. It's these spirits that understand balance, and what must be done to restore or to keep it. The sorcerers will be given instructions, and in turn give them to us, and we will carry them out. Usually a sacrifice of some sort is needed for balance to return."   
  
Heaving himself up to sit on the tile, he set about spilling the soap on his skin, gaze tracking his hands as they scrubbed the stuff into his pale flesh and beard and hair. "I've seen the clothes used. They're only an aspect." He remembered the clothes, yes, but much more he remembered the screaming drums. "It will be better if you do not know what they are for, I think."

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra did not understand the agony of seeing memories that were not his own. For him, it was commonplace. Practically expected. And unconscious as he was when Keht took control, Cobra had no idea of Sigvard's torment when he had had his face thrust into the grimier side of his childhood, beyond the folds of the night tent. The mud. Smoke. "Very well," he shrugged, moving on the drying his legs. "If that's how you wish to do it."   
  
"I'll have a shift on the watch duty soon, any way," Irfan murmured, drying off more of his hair now that he was dressed. "The guards take it in turns so we don't get fatigued. It means I'll be away for a day or two."   
  
"That may be for the best," Cobra mused. Taking a second towel, he kept working until he was as dry as before he stepped into the water, save for the damp hair at his scalp. "What happens with Keht and the shaman may frighten someone so godless." The words lacked bite, and Irfan merely nodded in reply. The Navanese didn't take much offense at their lack of deities.

What Sigvard said pique Cobra's interest; it was plain on his face. Slinging the towel around his shoulders, he raked his fingers through his hair in thought. "If that's true, then perhaps they have spoken to things like Keht before," he reasoned. "Or something close enough or old enough. But what do you mean by sacrifice?" That detail had caught his attention the most and he would not let it slip by. "Does it mean wealth? A blood tithe? A life?" The last one, most ominous, earned a faint grimace even from Cobra himself as he took a moment to check himself. "... I mean from a chicken or a goat," he clarified, gripping one of his elbows where he stood. If it was a human life, that cost would be too high even by his standards.

 

SIGVARD -

 

igvard nodded along to  _ wealth _ , to  _ blood _ , to  _ life _ , as he dropped his soap-slicked body again into the water. "All these things," he murmured. Pawing at himself to get rid of the last days' grime, he was slower than his usual furious efficiency, though not any more careful. "Usually a life, yes, for the severer matters—a goat, a deer, perhaps a bull." Sinking below the softly rippling water, he pushed his blunt fingers through his hair and the scruff of his beard, scrubbing the soap away with calloused palms. He stayed a moment. The deafening sound of blood in his ears, shutting out the world around him.   
  
He surfaced with some reluctance, apparently resentful of the need to breathe, and settled his back against the bath's ledge. His eyes were on Cobra's. He'd understood the clarification, and was now wary of the need for it: "We don't offer up a man's life in this way." Was there some such southern custom? Either now, or in times past? "His life is his own. He may not be avenged if he's done a murder without honour, or stolen, or allows himself to be buggered, or such things; but he's entitled to fight for his life all the same, and to do away with those that would take it from him. He would not be sacrificed."   
  
There was the unhappy realization, coming slow over his face, that he was finished with his bathing. And look: The two southerners were standing, dry, waiting. He was keeping them up. "The spirits may ask for a man's blood," he said, soft, "or his flesh, but not his life. And in the case of his blood and flesh, he must give it willingly." Sluggish, he turned, and heaved his massive body up onto the tile.

The wine had had the opposite effect as he'd meant it to. He was more raw, not less; skin pink and aching, touch-starved, much too hot and wanting the warmth of another body all at once. "This is rare, I think," he mumbled feebly. "When I have seen it, it's been mostly deer." Carrying on to himself, he swayed as he reached the towels and set to drying off. "The Urdai, do they use sacrifice? Or the fire-priests in the Capital?"   
  


COBRA -

 

Cobra sighed, leaning against the wall and letting the cool stone soothe his shoulders. "It will have to be blood, then," he murmured. "I don't have any of those other things." However much luxury he was surrounded by, it was all Hamad's. Cobra hadn't had a coin to his name for years now, and what little possessions he had, he had given up when he entered a slave contract with the Duke. Should Hamad ever legitimately dismiss him, he was supposed to provide him with enough worldly goods to survive a year, but it had been clear for a long time now that the man had no intention of letting him go. Even before all of this, when Cobra spent most of his time  in boredom and neglect, Hamad still refused to sever ties with a  _ nadameer _ that he could keep up his sleeve.   
  
The talk of buggering elicited a hollow laugh from the man. "How defiled I must be," he commented, letting his head loll to one side as he looked back at Sigvard. "How filthy you must be too, Sigvard. Perhaps even more than me." Try as he might, his heart just wasn't in the teasing and the words came out too softly spoken to have much impact.    
  
"We don't have deer round here," Irfan cut in, getting dressed. "The Urdai have been buying goats, but the merchants tell me that they always buy goats, so I suppose it is nothing new. I've been to the Capital, though," his eyes briefly flicked to Cobra. "Last year, when Hamad went to visit the King but did not take you. I saw the people down by the beaches with the fires. It wasn't sacrifice, I think, just... hurting themselves. There was fire on the grounds, and they would walk across it."

Cobra's eyes grew wide and out of focus as a pang of dread flooded him unexpectedly, a muted sort of vision overlaying the bathroom. A stretch of glowing coals in the sand, short but still impossibly long. He could feel a soft touch on his hands, someone attempting to lead him forward.    
  
_ Won't you try? _   
  
The Urdai man jerked his hands back so sharply that his elbows connected with the wall behind him. Swearing, he buckled over, crossing his arms to rub at both elbows at once. "Filthy fire worshippers," he groused, the words coming to him easily although he had never concerned himself with the Capital's religion before. "There is no god in fire. It is simply a tool."   
  


SIGVARD -

 

Hot skin flushed hotter, and the loud effort of drying off became all the more obvious—huffing as he scrubbed the towel between his thick thighs, and next over his beard. Soft-spoken or no, the words had left their mark. Yes, he was defiled. Murderer, thief,  _ girlish _ . It was why he'd been driven into the mountains, and then out of his homeland altogether. It was why he was here, in this strange and hellish place, with nowhere to belong to and no-one to avenge him. Maybe driven out of here, too, soon enough, if his godling's resentment was any indication. He didn't enjoy the reminder.   
  
Hunched over as he was, drying and now dressing, he missed the sudden change in Cobra's face. But he caught the  _ smack _ of flesh and bone on stone, and mutterings, and the familiar impression of him doubled over. He straightened. His eyes went to his neck, his hands; only this wasn't a choking.   
  
His face puzzled. Not a choking. "Cobra?" He couldn't be sure. "You saw something?"

 

COBRA -

 

Grimacing at the sensations that ran up through the bones in his arms, Cobra lifted his head slowly. Even now, after all he had been through, the new kind of pain was unwelcome. He wanted to curl up, press his face against the swell of Sigvard's chest, be told everything was okay. Knowing it would be a lie did not make the idea less comforting, yet how could he ask for such a thing now? He'd been lashing out at the brute for days on end. Now he felt stretched too thin.    
  
"They walk on coals," he croaked, resigning himself to rubbing at his elbows some more in an attempt to soothe himself. "Keht was there once, the last time he had a body, I think." His body bucked slightly as the sensation of a sob racked him, although the tears didn't come. Feeling like an insane person, acutely aware of the eyes on him, he finally deigned to drop his towel and dress himself, hastily pulling on his pants and tunic.   
  
"Well, he had to be there at some point, to have something of his taken there," Irfan reasoned. "There were Urdai slaves at the Capital once, but that was over fifty years ago. We'll be lucky if whatever it was wasn't burned on a funeral pyre."   
  
"It isn't," Cobra piped up. "It can't be burned."

Irfan looked a little uneasy at the statement, but he was willing to give the seer the benefit of the doubt.   
  
"Sigvard," Cobra piped up again. "I feel... cold."    
  
Weak. He was was weak. A furrow deepened in his brow as he staved off the internal snarl of self-loathing at his vulnerability. "... Please."

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard nursed at his tongue, considering the imagery of the fire-walkers as best he could through the thick and heady fog of the wine. Of all the southern traditions he’d learned thus far—ageless prophets and desert-bound lords, not to mention shameless deceit and an almost competitive penchant for suffering—this one seemed to make the most immediate sense to him. They did it to hurt themselves, Irfan had said.   
  
He understood this. Pain was a tool as much as fire. Not just as a test to overcome, as he’d (barely) done with the bite; not just as a means to forget deeper terrors for a little while, a relief he’d once enjoyed with the agony of ginger oil burrowing up his ass. Pain, wielded properly in combat, could make one man a match for seven of his enemies. More, if he didn’t aim to live through it. The tactics of a berserker. Likely the priests didn’t aim to whip themselves into a frenzy of indiscriminate killing, but he felt he understood the fire-walking in some way regardless.   
  
But here, this surprised him, Irfan going on about funeral pyres. The Northlander eyed him, and made to ask: Had he come around, then, to the idea that this Keht business wasn’t madness and fairy tales?   
  
It would have to wait. His name, those words, the same he’d heard when he’d first choked Keht into silence all those weeks ago. The Northlander had wept, then, and pleaded, and held onto Cobra as if his embrace alone could put all the pieces of his little world back together. Now he was slow to act. There was no frantic urgency that had once knocked over camel’s cream; as he moved his body closer and lifted his fingertips to his god’s waist, it was with a quiet hesitance, the pale giant obviously half-convinced that he’d only earn himself a scowl or a biting remark, regardless of how well-deserved it might be.

“Here,” he murmured. It wasn’t until his palms came against the solidity of his body, so far unpunished, that he found some of the confidence he’d been trying for. “I’m much too hot, anyway.” An excuse for Irfan’s benefit, although it was about as believable as Cobra’s chill. Heavy arms snaked around the southerner’s body, then, and hauled him up, chest to chest. Like an infant. He remembered the weight of him, more or less. Certainly the smell of him, as he pushed his nose into his still-damp hair. This had all once brought him such relief, this closeness. He waited for relief to come to him now. And waited, and waited.   
  
The soldier would set the pace back to their quarters, and it would be a slow one. They weren’t yet into the corridor when he spoke softly: “You say it isn’t burned.” Reluctance, still. It wasn’t too late for Cobra to spurn him. “Do you know what it is, then...? Has Keht told you?”

 

COBRA -

 

For a fleeting moment, the space between Sigvard's fingertips and his skin felt as wide as a canyon. He didn't lash out, holding his tongue on purpose lest he scare the man off, swallowing a whimper as the warm hand finally closed the gap and pulled him close. Drawing in  the smallest of breaths, he curled against the man's chest and pressed his face against his collar bone, but even he could feel the difference in the man's muscles, the tension in them that was so unlike before. He didn't trust him in the same way he had, which was funny. In many ways Cobra had been more terrible to Sigvard than Keht had ever been.

He sniffed, clinging tighter as they started to move. Only the question made him open his eyes, briefly glancing at Irfan with a look that dared him to comment on the way that he was being carried. The former whore was smarter than that, of course. Again, he worried for nothing.   
  
"I'm not sure," he admitted, frowning. "I have... vague ideas of it, I think. It is something golden, I think. A light shines from it and makes it hard to see in my dreams. It is supposed to be close to me." Again, he felt the lurking sensation of absence, absence of long locks of hair around his shoulders, absence of the weight of a turban on his head. He'd never wrapped his head in his life; it must have been figments of Keht's memories.    
  
"There's certainly a lot of gold in the Capital," Irfan drawled, eyes staying sharp as they made their way down the halls. "But the only light I saw was from lanterns and the sun."

"I think... Keht will be able to find it," Cobra murmured, hesitating to  broach the subject of the spirit taking control of his body again. He knew Sigvard wouldn't like it. "But finding it is quite a different matter if it is guarded instead of simply lost."

 

SIGVARD -

 

This golden, glowing thing was beyond imagining. A totem? A weapon? Sigvard pictured the sun, as Irfan had said, miniaturized. That would do until they came to it. It would be a long ways off, anyway, he reasoned—weeks along the coast, and all that after at least one good night's sleep.   
  
He did grimace, hearing Keht's name, but only heaved Cobra's body further up his own to hold him tighter. The beast was coming. It was inevitable. He would come in these next days, if the shamans had their way, and he didn't hold any hope that that would be the last of it. More and more, it was impossible to discern his godling's wishes from that creature's; more and more, there seemed to only be one path forward. He didn't know if it was Cobra who needed to be near that golden totem, or if it was Keht, and he no longer saw the point in trying to work it out. Even Irfan seemed resigned to following the wishes of that dark thing.   
  
"If it is guarded, I don't think I would be any good at thieving, this far south," he mused. To steal demanded a degree of being unnoticed, if not altogether unseen, and his pale and hulking mass would be much too conspicuous even in the Capital. "Do you think it would be?" His shoulders curled around his little cargo. "The king or his slave—would they be inclined to keep such a thing protected? What is their opinion of the Urdai? Keht and Urd and the rest."

 

COBRA -

 

Feeling very much like some kind of animal clinging to a tree, Cobra bit back the urge to fuss as his body was shifted, adjusting the grip of his thighs around the man's body to take some of the weight off his arms. "I doubt we'll be able to steal it by any means of stealth, if it is guarded," he said. "But we will have to wait and see. As a former slave of Hamad's it would not bee too difficult to get an audience with the King. Men are... jealous, when it comes to the property of their would-be adversaries."   
  
Cobra wasn't too sure what the Capital's current stance on the Urdai were, but thinking about it seemed to dredge up a great swell of emotion inside him. Gripping Sigvard's arms with paled knuckles, the anger seemed to make his chest swell without ever drawing in air. Gritting his teeth, his face twitch in the beginning of a scream that never came. The feeling passed, leaving him gasping for air. "He..." Pausing, he caught his breath. "He doesn't like them... the king. I think he was trying to speak but he was still too weak. But I felt the anger... but how could it be the same king? He would be old and dead by now, if it were him."

" _ That _ king?" Irfan chimed in. "That king was a madman. He released half the city's slaves and then burned himself alive. He never even sired an heir; the throne went to one of his cousins."   
  
Cobra felt a little flutter in his chest, like a hiccup. Straightening up, he twisted to look at Irfan incredulously. "How do you know that?"   
  
"The Navanese nobles  _ love _ to gossip about the Capital," Irfan scoffed. "It is one of their favourite past times, so of course I heard them. Their disdain for the fire-lovers goes back generations."

"Perhaps... they don't care about the golden thing as much, then," Cobra reasoned hopefully. "Maybe it will be a trivial artefact to them."

 

SIGVARD -

 

A sudden rigidity in Cobra’s body, an iron grip, halted Sigvard in his tracks. He drew back, and watched his contorted face, and called his name—his heart now hammering in his chest at the mere  _ glimpse _ of some unknowable fury. His cold sweat wasn’t relieved by the explanation, but at least he went on again, now with thick fingers twining in the southerner’s hair to rub gentle circles against his scalp.   
  
More fire, more terrible death. Cobra had called it merely a  _ tool _ , but it seemed to the Northlander to be much more fateful a thing. There was the circus, and the mad king, and the little god’s long-ago vision of a fiery gate, and on and on. It would be foolish of them to ignore it. Fire. And it would not be over yet.   
  
“Maybe,” he agreed, half-distracted. Burned himself alive. Could they be sure it was that, and not a murder? Of course, it being gossip, Irfan couldn’t know one way or the other. He would wait for his chance to ask the beast himself. “If they do protect it, I don’t mind taking it by force.” It was his usual, comfortable way of stealing anyway. “I thought you wouldn’t approve.” The Capital was a place of politics and grace and all these things he scarcely understood, hence Cobra’s coming along for the matter of the kingslaying. It was comforting to think he might be able to rely on more familiar tactics.

“I’ll ask Keht what he knows of it,” he murmured, coming now to the heavy door of Cobra’s quarters and pushing it open with the backs of his broad shoulders. “And the king, and the fire-walkers. Or I’ll have Eilif ask, if that’s his way. We’ll know more soon enough.” The words came like a promise, but each was more weary than the last, as if he was somehow exhausted merely by the saying of it. When he’d last spoken to Keht, he’d been convinced Cobra was lost to him forever. He couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t go exactly that way again. And although everything between himself and his little master seemed now to be a strain, raw and ugly, this was a far less miserable thing than the waking nightmare that whole awful affair had been. He wasn’t at all eager to see how things might get worse.   
  
Long strides crossed the floor to the bedside, where he sat Cobra down as softly as he could manage and began to extricate himself from his embrace. Dizzy from the wine, still, he intended to find himself a place on the wide floor to lay down and convalesce until sleep took him. The shamans had promised them dreamlessness. “Irfan,” he said lowly, watching the way his hands left his godling’s body, “will you stay here the night? When is your watch duty—where will we find you, if we have need for you?” Blue eyes lifted to search him out now. “Will you be watching the Urdai?”   
  


COBRA -

 

"Hamad wouldn't approve," Cobra corrected him earnestly, looking up at him as he was gently deposited on his bed. "It is only natural that he would want the cleanest way possible if he intends to usurp the throne. At least, I think that's what he's doing," he frowned, shaking the though out of his head before it could consume his attention. One could never truly be sure what the Duke of Navan was doing, except that he'd be doing it to benefit himself.    
  
His lips pressed together into a firm line as he watched the blond man take a spot on the floor, though a part of him felt reluctant to show any more neediness or vulnerability in front of Irfan, who had wept in his arms in quite the same way Cobra felt like weeping in Sigvard's arms now.

"It's funny," he chuckled, although the humour didn't quite reach his eyes. "He's a part of me yet I never get to speak with him. Some messages, from time to time, visions... but never a conversation like the ones you held." He wasn't sure if he should be pleased or upset by the fact. It seemed like a strange situation,  but no more strange than being bodily host to a spirit in the first place.   
  
"Mm, I can," Irfan nodded. "It starts tomorrow; it will only last a few days. I don't know for certain where I'll be posted, but if you have Cobra send word through his network of servant boys, I'm sure they'll find me swiftly enough."   
  
"I'd prefer if you left," Cobra spoke up finally, lifting his head. The guard raised his eyebrows in surprise, through the expression faded as he gave it some more thought.   
  
"If that's what you want," he reasoned with a shrug. "I can go to the wall and see what the Urdai are doing; they're fairly easy to spot when they have campfires lit. I doubt there will be much to see, though. As long as soldiers don't approach, their actions are so unremarkable that the novelty of spying on them has worn off for most of the townspeople. The one with the blue turban hasn't moved at all."

"Urd," Cobra nodded. "Please go check on them regardless. I... worry."   
  
With the awkward excuse, the guard took his leave, leaving Cobra and the Northlander alone in silence that the slave was quick to break.   
  
"Do you hate me yet, Sigvard?" Cobra asked quietly, tucking his feet underneath him before he leaned forward to brush the man's blond hair behind his ear, watching his expression with the touch. "Have I done enough terrible things to you to make you regret our bond?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard's features were softened by a mute disappointment as he watched Irfan's back until the door closed behind it. There'd been something comforting about the guard's presence, or at least distracting. Even if he was willfully and stubbornly ignorant about the matters of gods and men, he managed to keep a confidence and conviction about him, a kind of easy strength that the Northlander admired. More than merely admired. Yearned for.   
  
But nothing was simple, at least not for very long, and now he was as good as alone again. He looked at Cobra's face, and detected nothing. Even after weeks, he couldn't hope to read him—a consequence, he was sure, of the slave having been performing in one way or another since childhood, under the scrutiny of wicked, watchful eyes. The little god did not give up his secrets so easily, as savagely as they might have torn at him.   
  
The usual question put a tiredness in his bones. His shoulders dropped, and air was pushed slowly from his lungs as if they scarcely had the strength to hold breath.   
  
He shook his head. "I do not hate you," he muttered, weakened by being made to say it over and over and over when the fact would not change. "I do not hate you, and I do not want to hate you." It was a rotten story, for a man to hate his god. That wasn't the way of things. He'd told him from the start: Among his people, a cruel and terrible god would be put to the sword before long, and Sigvard would not give his loyalty to a beast like that to begin with.   
  
His eyes dropped to watch some point beyond seeing. His head rocked gently, cheek touching the chilly air where his godling's fingertips had been.

"I don't know what you want of me." Worse than hatred. "I can see that you're displeased with me, but you forbid me to leave. You ask me for comfort against the cold, but you seem to be obsessed with the effort of making me hate you. I don't know what to make of it." Pale fingertips found the edge of a cushion to pick at, below Cobra's kneeling body. "And there's Keht, who has even more disdain for me than you do. When he takes you, I have nothing. His horrors, those things he puts in my head, they'll bring me to madness before long." He'd managed to work a thread loose in half-thought. Seeing it, he withdrew his hand with an expression of mild disgust with himself—as if this, the smallest interruption of the cushion's intricate pattern, was the gore of an open wound.   
  
His voice was then as soft and errant as the night's breeze. "I wish you could show me your love as you do to Irfan." There was the faint scent of jasmine. "You're kind and patient with him." The swell of the drapes. "You protected him. You protect him still, I think." The sound of waves coming up the beach, far, far below. "I want to be deserving of these things, like he is. Your patience and protection. I wish you would prize and fight for my love as fiercely as you do my hatred."

 

COBRA -

 

A relief, then, to hear those words, although they were somewhat dampened by what the blond man said next. He listened, hands on his knees, perhaps the godliest he'd ever been aside from brief moments when he had held a torch or a dagger in his hand. It was hard not to interrupt, but he held his tongue. When Sigvard spoke of Keht it was especially easy to do, for he really didn't know how the spirit regarded the Northern man, for he'd been unconscious for all of their discussions and the visions had never concerned themselves with the Northlander.    
  
"My love," he said finally, not quite deciding between laughter or sorrow. "Are you so sure you do not have it? Sigvard," with a sigh, he reached out to him, doing his best to coax the despairing man up onto the bed, away from the hardness of the ground. There, where his lips could come closer to his ear and he could wrap his arms around the man's broad shoulders and feel the warm, steady pulse under his pale skin. All through it, an acute awareness of the word  _ ashi _ hung over his head like a shadow, but he refused to say it. Her word; the namesake of a titanic memory. Cobra would be his own entity, and if nothing else, his arrogance would measure up to the task. But that was for later.

"I do not strive to make you hate me," he whispered. "I fear it. Why else would I ask so often? Most men do not last a single night without cursing my name." He did chuckle then, but only faintly, his mind clouded with memories from the brothel.    
  
"It is easier with Irfan," he murmured, face growing more serious. "We met when each of us were at some of the lowest points in our lives. I have seen him at his most wretched, and he has seen me at my most foul. It was a brutal and terrible thing that we did, and the reasons for it do not entirely wash away the sins of the method. It is the reason Hamad feels we still have a pact between ourselves, although of course his hands stayed clean." Scoffing, he let the man go, leaning back enough to look him in the eye, smoothing his hair back from his face.    
  
"I would not be surprised if Keht had a hand in that night as well," he mused. "But I am here now, Sigvard. Won't you stay with me? I'll stay with you, even after all this business in the Capital."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Beckoned, Sigvard set to lifting his heavy body off the ground, clambering onto the bed with all the gracelessness and determination of a toddler. His head felt heavy. It usually did. As Cobra's arms circled his shoulders, he let his chin rest at the nape of the man's neck; his thick arms slung a loose embrace about his waist.   
  
A faint confusion fell across his dim expression, hearing he'd somehow got it wrong. The slave was the one who'd once warned him off of love, after all—rightfully and viciously so, with all the usual taunts and venom. He'd once called Sigvard a coward, and denied him the mercy of a tonic to make him sleep and forget old horrors; he'd asked him the same thing then,  _ do you hate me _ , and laughed and laughed. It had been so often paired with a smile, that question. Like some game. He'd been smiling when he threatened to make a challenge of it. To see how madly he could get his disciple to hate him.   
  
He remembered these things. The question, asked again and again, with a wicked smile, with laughter that came sharp at his ears. The last weeks of bitterness had done little to reverse the course; he barely felt human in this place, much less loved and valued for his love. His fingers curled in the fabric of Cobra's tunic. He wanted to cling to these reassurances, but they were too little, too late; he couldn't manage it. He wasn't drunk enough. Pity.   
  
He listened in quiet patience to the half-story. As he did, seeing imaginary dark rooms when he blinked, seeing blood, he let his grip go limp; slow, soft, asking for silent permission, he moved his hands beneath Cobra's garment to open flat and wide against his lower back. He couldn't remember when he'd last done it. Touch for touch's sake.

"Yes," he breathed, in answer. It hadn't required any sort of thought. "I will follow you to the ends of the world. I am your disciple, still." There was visible surprise at the promise in return. Then softer, softer. He couldn't swear it, could he? Neither of them knew what might happen there. Keht might take him forever, and then...?   
  
They were alone. He remembered: "Will you tell me the rest of it?" Shifting his weight in his place, he tried to straighten and reclaim a little sobriety. "Now Irfan's gone. Will you tell me what happened? The men's crimes, and their justice."

 

COBRA -

 

The promise brought him peace, the brief moment mercifully stretching out longer in his mind before Sigvard's curiousity dragged his mind into darker places.   
  
"Are you sure?" he asked, the words flowing as naturally as Sigvard's agreement to stay by his side had. His lifted one hand from his knee, turning over his palm and feeling an invisible weight there. The question did not need answering; if SIgvard was not sure, he would not have asked, but Cobra knew it was terrible knowledge all the same. "I can still feel the dagger in my hand," he murmured, reminiscing. Again, his lips twitched in a smile. It couldn't be helped. He'd been trained well.    
  
"We drugged them first. It made the killing part easy. As they began to lose blood, we dragged the bodies into a pile and..."   
  
The slow, fat  _ plop _ of raindrops grew into a thick and steady patter as his eyes l;ost focus to the memories of red. Blood and rain, both the same, a figure rising out of the still surface of a pool, hair slick with it in such a way that it framed his shoulders like a cloak. Breath hitching, his fingertips were already at his through, fingertips grazing the mottled bruises before eyes opened bright and white against dark, blood-slick skin.   
  
_ Ashi _   
  
Deep breaths. Utterly disturbed, he slowly lowered his hand, cautious. Still here. He let his breathing return to normal before he spoke. Careful, careful; like walking on eggshells. "He's awake," he murmured. "I think he will be ready for the goatherds tomorrow."

He shook his head slightly, trying to rouse himself from the daze of the vision. It felt as though a faded image of bare feet walking through a field still overlaid everything he looked at, and it made him queasy. Grimacing, he closed his eyes. "The brothel," he spoke up, a strain in his jaw marking his determination. "Navanese nobles come in far fouler flavours than Hamad. Their godlessness skews their sense of right and wrong. In the brothels, men buy just about anything, and there is a reason Irfan knows how to fight."   
  
He was speaking too quickly. Taking another breath, he opened his eyes and found his eyesight clear again. His shoulders relaxed somewhat, but it didn't make the topic of conversation any more palatable. "They would watch fights for sport, and those fights would not end until one of them was dead. It was made worse, I think, that they made him kill so many of the boys he grew up with in the brothel."   
  


SIGVARD -

 

It was worst when they were close like this. When it was only inches between them, Sigvard could hear the change in Cobra’s breath, and see his eyes begin to stare through him, and feel his hand leap for his throat. There was always the terror of whether or not he would choke the beast into silence in time, or the sudden grief of realizing the slave didn’t have the strength for it, this time, and Sigvard would have to do the job.   
  
This was neither; to drop the fight, to let him come. This was worse still. The Northlander shuffled closer, uselessly, and put his hands to his godling’s hips. Unblinking. Scarcely breathing himself. There was a tension in his body that only sharpened at the mention of  _ goatherds _ . He frowned, and nearly corrected him, but the southerner just as soon seemed to be shaking it off. A vision...?   
  
Of course, the story had him distracted. One horror traded for another. He nodded, first, having mostly followed the vague premise of Navanese brothels defying the usual purpose. Then he took breath; bracing himself for some manner of evil perversion, sexual violence, or even an attempt at the then-whore’s life. He didn’t expect  _ fighting _ . Death. He couldn’t even imagine it, at first, and would come to regret trying to piece the picture together from his own memories, the animal sounds of desperation to live, the pain of relentless blows, the smell of blood.   
  
He was quiet for a long moment, lost in this imagined tapestry of gore. Had it become easier for the boy Irfan, over time, or all the harder? And the men. Did the practice die with them?

When he appeared again to find reality among all this rotten mess, he tugged at Cobra’s shirt weakly, wanting him close again, wanting the weight of him in his lap and his lips at his ear and the warmth of his body wrapped up in his heavy arms. His eyes, though, hunted among the cushions for answers. “You were with Hamad then?” Voice soft, distant, as he preoccupied himself with putting it all together. “How did you know of him, of Irfan, and what went on in that place?”

 

COBRA -

 

He let himself be pulled forward; he would be lying if he denied the comfort he felt in Sigvard's body heat, having him close again after all this time. In his mind's eye, Keht offered images of his past, flicking through them like random curiousities, bright colours of brothel costumes and brilliant blood on marble tiles.  _ This? _ as if he were asking, including himself in the reminiscence.  _ This one? This? _   
  
"Of course," he gave a hollow chuckle, lips quirking at the memory. "Who else would take me there? When I was mysterious and new, he would show me off often. Most of this," his voice faded away as he turned, hands looped around Sigvard's neck for an anchor, regarding the piles and piles of luxurious clothes littering his closet. "Most of this was from before. After the killing, when he had heard the details of what we had done, that was when he started to grow distant, I think. Yet he still kept me close." He grinned now, unable to help himself. Jaw clenched in the display of white teeth, he made a conscious effort to turn it into a grimace.    
  
"A  _ nadameeer _ like me is useful to Hamad. Just like he will use you, or anyone else. We knew that, and still we did this terrible thing. This is the reality of being owned, Sigvard. I don't know to make you understand completely, but it is a start. There are pieces of Irfan in that brothel that he will never get back, just like there are pieces of me in the mud and straw up North. We had nothing left to lose."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Feeling the ugly tension in Cobra's body, in his face, Sigvard tugged him closer. His wide hands, running along the man's rigid spine, were meant to warm and comfort him; but it was greedy, too, to touch him like this without the fear of being chided or snarled at or pushed away. His lips touched the bruises at his throat. He closed his eyes to everything irrelevant and absorbed himself in the feel and the scent of him, fresh from the bath.   
  
There was the idea of  _ understanding _ , then, and the Northlander nodded his head gently. There were things he understood. He'd known men like Hamad. He'd known suffering, and the fighting for one's life, and what it was to be broken and put together again, somehow incomplete, again and again. And there were things he did not understand: He had never known what it was to be owned, to be betrayed by a father, to be made to perform. He had never known these things, and before Keht, he would never have expected to fully understand them. But there were those visions in his head. Memories that weren't his own, grotesque and as real to him as any other thought. He was sure they would not be the last.    
  
His broad chest swelled in a slow breath against the warmth of Cobra's body. "Do you think...?" As soon as he'd found the thought, he lost it. Lids lifted again to slivers, seeking the terrace and the sea beyond as if to help him concentrate. It helped, perhaps; or perhaps it was his fingertips slipping beneath his godling's shirt to worship his naked skin in slow circles. "Do you think he is most loyal to Hamad? If we end up away from this place. After the Capital, and after that—would Irfan stay here, with the Duke?" A moment's pause, as he considered it. "Or king, I suppose, if he has his way." A fresh thought: "You don't think Keht would object to Hamad's task, this kingslaying...? If it complicates our search for this gold-thing he's after?"

 

COBRA -

 

He made a faint noise in his throat, letting himself be pulled closer with the faint thump of chest hitting chest. Wanting to curl up against his body heat, the noise changed in pitch when the lips brushed his sensitive throat, like some kind of cat giving a human a warning. Soothed again as soon as they were at each other’s shoulders and he had what he wanted. How feral he’d become.

The question pulled him out of it, making his eyes snap open incredulously. “Loyal to Hamad?” He jeered, pushing Sigvard down into the pillows. If he got pulled along, so be it, as long and his face was above the others so he could see the fire in his eyes. “Loyal to  _ me _ , Sigvard. Me. Hamad simply pays his salary and in return he does what a guard does, laced with the occasional fuck. I am the one deserves Irfan’s loyalty. Hamad’s part in his freedom was trivial.”

Still, though, the thought nagged at him now that the bigger man had put it there. “He still might,” he groused. “Irfan has finally made a life for himself, as peaceful as anyone could wish for. He may refuse to give it up after the task Hamad ordered him to do is done.”

Already glowering, he grew dismissive. “I do not care what Keht thinks,” he snapped boldly, “He will kill if he wants it and he will find the good thing if he wants it. That much is clear.” Huffing, he wriggled down the man’s thick frame, finding the most comfortable hollows for his body before he rolled into his side, one leg still draped over the man’s hip as he pressed close, humming. “I want you to hold me, Sigvard. As if you are not afraid of me. I am tired of being cold.”

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard fell among the cushions, arms empty, his embrace having come loose with the sudden shove. His breath was gone, and as he rose on his elbows, his once dreary blue eyes came alive with alarm, anger, fear, humiliation—it took everything to simply  _ listen _ above the rush of blood in his ears and the buzzing of a million thoughts. His jaw was tight. His fists, too. The answers brought no satisfaction, but then that wasn't surprising. Irfan's apparent peace was why he'd asked to begin with; he had no illusions of where his debt was owed. And Keht, yes, Keht would of course do whatever he wished. He had his reign. And it seemed to be an unchallenged one.   
  
Just as soon as Cobra sought out a place against his body, Sig was squirming free of him. "I am afraid of you," he breathed, sounding the part. His eyes went to the edge of the bed, and the rest of him began to follow. "Do you know I ache to hold you? And when I do, you—you reject me, you push me away and you spit these things." He would go to the floor, he thought; the floor, at least, he could trust. "I only just confessed, Cobra." When his voice found some footing above a whisper, it was shot through with grief. "Please, I only just told you I don't feel your love." It was scarcely minutes ago now. In his sheer desperation, he'd willfully made himself weak; and in that moment of vulnerability, his vicious little god had lured him in, only to treat him to the same scorn he'd endured for weeks and weeks. He'd had quite enough. "I don't feel it. I am afraid of you."   
  


COBRA -

 

He had not expected the rejection, and it stung more than any whip he'd felt in his life. The outrage of it. "Then hold me!" he cried, throwing a pillow after the retreating man. "Do you not listen?! Would you have me  _ beg _ ?!" His lips twisted in a scream that did not come; all at once, the quiet. His spine straightened as he let out of a long sigh, a different cast to his eyes as he regarded the man now.   
  
"What a troublesome vessel this is," Keht drawled. "Even when I leave you to your own devices, he ends up screaming and in pain. I can still hear him--" The sentence was interrupted by the  _ crack _ of a slap, having come from his own hand. Heat bloomed on his cheek just as shock bloomed on his expression, sparing the blond man another glance filled with foreboding before it drizzled away, and the teary-eyed fury returned.

How he wanted to scream. How he wanted to bawl, and beat his fists upon his chest, and how infuriating it was that all of these things he so desperately wanted to do could be seen as childish by a man who insisted on carrying him like a babe. Breath heavy and ragged in his throat, he pushed himself off the bed. When he spoke, it was barely contained to a seething whisper.    
  
"If you will not hold me," he warned. "If there is to be no warmth here, then so be it." The clothes pile. A blue coverall. It would be enough for the short trip in these warm nights. He dressed himself with grim determination before heading for the door, taking nothing else with him. He did not need poisons where he was going.   
  


SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard’s jaw was set, painfully so. He watched his little god in sorrow, terror, and at last in utter helplessness as madness unfolded in front of him. He said nothing. If Cobra didn’t understand his cruelty, if he was intent on a tantrum, there was no sense in trying to explain. If he’d decided to forsake the shamans and their ceremony, what words would now convince him otherwise? Besides, Keht had come at last. He had not been choked down, and so the Northlander couldn’t be sure if the slap had done it, or if this was some wicked manipulation on the old spirit’s part.   
  
So he said nothing. He pushed himself to his feet. His jaw ached from strain, and there was still that damned roar of blood in his ears. Quiet, he only followed his godling, as he said he always would.

 

COBRA -

 

He was going to Urd, of course. He let Sigvard follow him, know how useless it would be to try to stop him from doing so. Using one of the hidden, well-guarded exist from the wall nearby the palace was the quickest route because it was closest to the Urdai camp, although the guards patrolled the palace enough to recognise him. Cobra showed them the struck brand on the underside of his foot, having long since healed over, and gave his name as Nadameer. He said Hamad would prefer the arrangement kept secret. That could go one of two ways, but it was of little concern to him now.   
  
The  jounrey to the camp was silent but easy thanks to the torches marking their destination now that twilight had begun to settle in. And there was Urd, as fabled; kneeling, bare-chested in the sand, flanked by torches, as though meditating. Even kneeling, his great height was apparent, and with his wide mouth and hard, angled features, he really did look like some kind of statue. His head was wrapped in a blue turban. He only turned towards them as they drew close, barely a flicker of a smile on his face as he got to his feet.

Cobra approached him without hesitation even though he started to avoid eye contact once he stood before him, the top of his head only reaching the man's chest. He had met the chief of the Urdai tribe before, of course, but that was long before Keht had been awakened inside him. After adamantly insisting that he was not an ideal candidate to be the people's prophet, he felt sheepish now, to stand before him, being just that by merit of hosting Keht alone. The scolding never came, mercifully; just a hand atop his head, ruffling the tousled locks with a curious laugh.   
  
"You are not strong enough to make it grow?" Were Urd's first words, his voice rich and almost melodic; less serious than one might imagine based on his appearance. Up close, one could see an entire history of scars littering his torso. Arms, too.   
  
"He's... not here right now," Cobra explained awkwardly, reluctant to use the phrase 'in control'.    
  
"He is," Urd chuckled. "He walks behind you."

Confused, Cobra half turned, glancing at Sigvard.    
  
"I do not mean the goatherd," Urd raised a palm to correct himself. "He is not something that can be seen by most eyes. But he can hear me, all the same. Come, you must be hungry. We will slaughter a goat." His chin lifted when he spoke, as though he were greeting someone even taller than himself. Yet he placed a hand on Cobra's shoulder, ushering him towards the canvas tents surrounding a main campfire where already, other curious faces were peeking out, having grown silent at the arrival.    
  
"Join us," the chief invited over his shoulder, beckoning to the Northlander. "I am Urd. You protect him, yes?"

 


	14. Feeding

SIGVARD -

 

Northlanders' feet were not built for sand. The fair-skinned giant trudged along, each step slipping, twisting, fighting against the dry sea that pulled him down by the ankles and threatened to swallow him whole. He breathed hard through his teeth. He was tired and drunk and miserable, and all that along with the effort of keeping upright put a greasy sweat on his naked shoulders that the torchlight seemed to cling to.   
  
His eyes bored into Cobra's back, trying to keep pace. It crossed his mind to stop. A glimpse of a thought, first, and then a blinding urge. Gods, he'd been tied at the end of ropes, dragged behind horses over rocks and dirt, and he felt in him now the same ache for release, relief, from whatever infuriating bondage yanked him along. He swatted the air in front of him, as if to catch an unseeable string. He wanted to stop. He wanted to lie down in the cool desert and drown like it seemed to ask him to.   
  
But his body was a beastly thing, and went on and on. His bloodshot eyes picked out the shape of tents, not very far off now; a private mutter, a half-hearted prayer in his own tongue, would be the last agonized sound from his lips before they closed in a line and he set to breathing properly. He hefted his shoulders up to square them, more or less. And still, at near his full height, he felt dwarfed by the man they came to.   
  
Urd. He knew him by the turban, and the way he sat, as these things had been described to him; but he felt he would have known him regardless.   
  
His eyes went first to his scars. A comfort, usually, as his own pale skin was ravaged with them, and so it was simple for him to imagine a story behind a gnarl of flesh, or a nick, or a gouge. But these were a strange people, a people who strangled their beloved prophets; he couldn't be sure whether the mess was earned in battle or some savage and ludicrous ritual. His grip closed around nothing. He should have brought a weapon, he thought, to be safe.

There was the iron taste of blood, then. His jaw was tight again, his tongue caught. That  _ hand _ in Cobra's hair, that little derision; and how his godling tolerated it, and the quiet and meek and deferential way he spoke to the man who would mock him and keep him and throttle him forever. Patience came easier to him with Irfan, he'd said, and now it seemed to come easier with Urd, too. And Sigvard, the stupid brute, the pathetic thing, who'd given his up his life within days of meeting the slave, who'd promised to follow him, and take him to the Capital, and to always stay—he'd begged for patience after weeks of viciousness, and he'd been given more viciousness still. If there was hope in this, he didn't see it. He shifted his weight, but he found the desert no longer wanted to claim him.   
  
A long silence was his first answer. An obvious hesitance about him. His gaze flicked to Cobra as if to ask, but he just as quickly seemed to decide it pointless. He thought of the slip of Hamad's blade in his palm, and the sickening cut of teeth into the meat of his shoulder; he flinched, but did not affirm it. No, he wasn't a protector, he thought. He was only drunk, and tired, and miserable.   
  
Still, he stepped forward. He lifted his eyes to the tents, the warm fire, and the spying faces that only reminded him how far he was from belonging. "I follow him," he answered finally, low and thin. "I am Sigvard." More faces; they stared, and he stared back. He caught the glint of an unattended spear, close enough. The desert winds brought the clamour of voices and the smell of goat shit—and from someplace distant behind him, a sung note, shrill and lonesome. He turned, and watched, but they were too far now from the estate for him to place the singer among it, no doubt a shaman, no doubt singing to the Urdai's fires. The tune carried on, and he pulled his attention from it to find a cool place to stand away from the flames.   
  


COBRA -

 

The  shorter man seemed uneasy as he walked, keeping a wary eye on Sigvard as he walked. Truthfully, he did not trust the man to keep from lashing out so close to Urd; even when he had ruffled his hair, it was as if he could feel the man seething like a change in the air. Urd, on the other hand, remained serene. If he had noticed the resent, he had not chosen the act upon it. He did tilt his head, however, giving the man a quizzical look.    
  
"You do protect him," he informed the man with a small nod. "Cobra." It seemed clarification was in order; he assumed the pale man's resent was towards the spirit housed inside him. Judging by the severity of the bruises on his neck, the battle between Cobra and Keht must have been fearful at times. But it was still no great tragedy to Urd; all fixable, in the end.    
  
"You are pale to be in the desert," he carried on speaking as he walked. He moved slowly to accommodate the visitors, who were unable to move with the same sure-footedness as the Urdai tribe. "Do you come from the mountains? Are you one of the voices who sing?" Seeing the way the man shrank back from the fire, he stopped at the edge of the warm glow, letting him stay in the shadows. His honey-gold eyes flicked to one of the largest tents in the camp where a goat was being coaxed through the flaps.

Cobra had been biting his tongue, not wanting to step on Sigvard's toes by answering simple questions for him, but his silence made his shuddering all the more obvious, when the bleat of the goat sent an all-too-familiar swoon through him. Gritting his teeth, he buckled over somewhat, struggling to stave off the spirit.    
  
"It would be easier to let him come," Urd said mildly, looking down at the man. "He is hungry."   
  
"Not while I'm awake," Cobra groused, feeling Sigvard's eyes on his back. All around him, eyes. Coos of  _ Keht _ and other reverent whispers in a native Urdai tongue that was foreign to his ears. "... He doesn't like it when I change."

"He is hungry," Urd repeated, turning to the Northlander now. "You can go into the tent with him, but it would be... mm," he twisted his wrist in the air as he searched for the word in common tongue, settling on an alternative. "You would know fear. Do you understand? It is better to stay away."   
  
Cobra flinched, fingertips already grazing his throat. "You're afraid of me enough already, aren't you, Sigvard?" he asked lowly, voice dripping with resent. "Surely you don't need me to disgust you as well."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard's expression tightened at the desert lord's question, telling him in silence how bizarre it was to confuse a soldier with a shaman. "No," he answered plainly. "From the villages further north. The singing—"   
  
The bleat of the goat. The familiar sight of Cobra's hunched body. Sigvard only watched, as he had done a dozen times by now, his hands limp at his sides. There was none of the usual dread. He'd known this was coming, and these last weeks of Cobra's bitterness had done nothing if not remind him of his own helplessness. They were stood here because of it. So his lips, still parted in a broken attempt at explanation, closed firmly at the ridiculous notion that the slave minded at all what he  _ didn't like _ , as if his desires had a damned thing to do with any of this. An excuse, and a pathetic one. He was only made more sure of it when even now, his little master couldn't help but deride him for the fear that he himself had bred in him. More venom. Fine, fine.   
  
There was no answer to Cobra's hostility, and he was unwilling to fumble in some pointless attempt at one while surrounded by watchful strangers. So he was quiet, and turned his gaze to Urd instead.   
  
"I'm accustomed to death," he explained. His voice was thin, still, and flat; he was unchallenging and untheatrical, simply aiming to make himself clear. "I've slaughtered goats. Men, too. I've killed them and carved them up in the mud, and for days I've laid wounded with them in the ditches." The sights and the sounds of broken flesh under his blade, his hands, his teeth came more easily to him than  _ language _ did. "At times I have starved and eaten innards and raw flesh from the bone, and only had snow and blood to drink."

The Northlander's eyes moved, slow with exhaustion, to where the goat had gone. "I know he is hungry, I have watched him for weeks." He had not missed the fixation with meat, further and further from a prepared and proper meal. He didn't expect there to be a cooking-fire waiting. "I know the nature of it." Finally, he hauled one leg after another towards the tent. "I will not be disgusted by this thing. I will stay with you." Clear, now, he was speaking to Cobra. "I've said I would. I intend to."

 

COBRA -

 

If the men knew each other better, Urd might be forgiven for not knowing what a shaman looked like, these days. It had been years since he had seen one; it was so rare for them to cross paths in the desert and without a True Keht, their visits to the ancient city at the foot of the mountains were less frequent. Better to stay by the coast where they could fish, and hope for Keht's soul to come up from the water. Who could have known that he would resurface all the way North where the water was cold?    
  
"Oh?" he raised his eyebrows, a light blooming in his eyes. Contrary to any apprehension to the grisly description, he seemed delighted. "He is a fighter," he called to Cobra, who had been inching away with a great deal of unease. "You are very lucky! This new body is strong but it is not fast enough for a spear."   
  
Another pang. Grunting, Cobra bit back a curse at the pair of them, feeling as though a pressure was building in his skull that he just couldn't quite shake. "I don't... want him to see," he complained, shaking his head. The swooning persisted, a heat that flooded his skin. When his fingers finally reached his throat, a wide palm grabbed his hand and pulled it away.   
  
"You will forgive me," Urd met Cobra's look of furious betrayal with a thin smile. "I have waited a very long time."   
  
Darkness. The half-caste's body slumped for a moment before he lifted his head again with a slow breath. Shoulders relaxed, he dropped to his knees  as the chieftain released his wrists, cooing as he bent forward and rubbed his cheek against the red sands.

"The land has missed you," Urd said warmly, unperturbed as he watched the strange behaviour. His palm was warm when he clapped the big man on the shoulder. "Come," he invited Sigvard, gesturing to the tent. "You will understand, I think. The goatherds slaughter their stock too. You would have eaten, as he eats, if you were dying."

The inside of the tent was dimly lit by candles, floored by worn-out furs but not much else in the way of furniture. The long-eared goat, tethered to the tent post by a rope, gave a curiously bleat but did not fight as Keht approached and ran his thumb over its jugular. Exposing his teeth to the air, the tip of his tongue confirmed their bluntness, to his disappointment.    
  
"I am weak," he complained, beseeching the men.    
  
Chuckling, Urd produced a dagger, turning to Sigvard. "Would you like to cut the goat's throat? It could help this wound between you, maybe."   
  
"Feed me," Keht cooed. "Know me. I will show you the light."

 

SIGVARD -

 

" _ Feed me. _ "   
  
That first night in Hamad's hospitality, the inescapable southern heat had cooked Sigvard alive with a belly full of stuffed figs. He'd been drunk then, too. And there had been the capricious slave, knelt at his feet, cooing ' _ feed me. _ ' The sight of it, the object of his frenzied childhood fixation reduced to the property of a savage lord and nonetheless managing to hold the air of a damned  _ king _ over the bleary Northlander—it had delighted him, the tired fighter, the hapless boy so far from his home. It'd had him enraptured from the start. He'd given away his life well before he'd decided it for himself, and this was perhaps the only reason it had gone on this long.   
  
That first night came to him now with the words, but there was no delight to match it. He was a stranger to himself. He'd lost his way somewhere in all the mess, and he couldn't hope to find it again. He didn't belong in this place.   
  
He took the blade near as soon as it was offered, firm and easy in his grip. He would not be a fighter if it didn't cross his mind to cut open Urd's naked gut with it, and Keht's bruised throat, and the thick canvas of the tent so that he could race towards death in the open sands. With these images in his head, he went for the goat in silence. He knew he was past sense. His mind was clouded and aching with questions for Urd, and Keht, and Cobra; but he was alone, and so very tired, and questions would do him little good. Killing was simpler. It was an ugly and visceral thing that would soon shut out the buzzing in his head.   
  
"I will feed you," he said to Keht, eyeing the goat. He made careful note of its weight, and the gentle curve of its horns, as both would complicate the effort—the thing was docile enough now, but he knew this would not last when it realized death was coming for it. "I will feed you," he repeated, "and in thanks, you will show me nothing. I won't have you put visions in my mind."

The warrior bent in a sudden motion, his arm outstretched to snatch at one of the beast's ankles, to yank it off-balance so that it would topple in a heavy thud to its side on the covered floor. He was on it, then, his full weight straddling the thing's bloated belly. It brayed and kicked and twisted in frantic desperation to get upright, its head jerking wildly in blows that only served to gore its horns into hides and dirt. A flush bloomed on Sig's skin. He heaved forward a ways, pinning the goat's forelegs with his hands first and then under his knee; he sat heavy, crushing ribs and lungs. A measured grasp for its horns missed, first. His second attempt landed an iron grip and yanked  _ back _ , back, craning its neck until it wouldn't permit another inch.   
  
A moment's quiet, or what would be if the pathetic beast wasn't still moaning on the floor. The Northlander, gasping, shot a glance to Keht; meant to check his readiness, as the blood would come quick. And then he watched his work. The knife moved under the shadow of the goat's thick neck, the tip of the blade to the floor, and at last there was one swift pull to cut through fur and hide and tendon. The neck craned a little further. The moaning was done. Another drag of the knife to be sure, and the foreigner settled back in his place, blissfully unthinking as he wiped the steel clean on his trousers.

 

KEHT-

 

His grin was wide, open-mouthed, and incredulous. "You don't want it?" he asked, looking up from where he was on his hands and knees, finding a gap in the furs to dig his toes into the sand. Beside them, Urd shifted his weight from one leg to another. He might as well have screamed, for the movement drew Keht's eye so easily. "He will gladly take it instead," he chuckled, rising up onto his knees and reaching out for the man.    
  
Nodding, Urd moved forward, crouching his ling limbs as he took the man's hand, lacing fingers as he pressed a cheek to his temple. "Please show me home," he murmured. "When the flowers bloomed. My memory has faded."    
  
Pressing his lips together but losing none of the smile, Keht seemed to bask in this attention, watching the man wrestle with the goat from under thick veil of eyelashes. It was only when the gleaming tip of the blade drew near to the goat's throat that the spirit took in a rattling breath, hand slipping away from the chief's as he backed up on his haunches and pushed his shoulders down low like an animal waiting to pounce. No sooner had the arterial spray painting a sudden crimson splatter across the furs and the smaller man's face, had he thrust his face into the wound, growling. Drinking, mostly, for his teeth were too blunt to savage the thing, though bite he did when his mortal flesh needed to take a hot, huffing breath though his nose.

Looking on with a mix of shock an exhilaration, Urd inched closer but at the same time kept his distance; didn't touch him. "It is good you came here," he said distantly. "If he had been hungry enough to weep, he might have killed a man."    
  
A deep, wet, sound, perhaps grunting laughter, as the man hauled the carcass up against his chest to slow the flow of blood. Feeding in slow, greedy gulps, his face was a mess of gleaming crimson that made the whites of his eyes look wild. Surely he had taken enough to make himself sick, but there seemed to be nothing inhibiting his meal, not even a distended belly. When he broke for more air than his nose could give him, his sigh of delight was as clear as a bell. Babbling a few sweet words in ancient tongue, he leaned back to look at the chief, dribbling blood from his mouth that he collected on his palm. Leaning forward, he made a crimson palm print over Urd's right eye, and then it was as if the chief had stopped breathing altogether, eyes glassy and unfocused. But only for a moment.

He came to with a great gasp, breathing as though he had just run an lap around the encampment. Frenzied, he took Keht's ears into his hand,s pulling him forward for a kiss that told of his desperation for such a vision, for such comfort. He clutched him to his chest, pleading gratitude in Urdai tongue, tolerated for a few moments before the spirit sat back, uselessly wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.   
  
"They stole my amber," he croaked, a huskiness matching his wild appearance. "They stole my ring, and my spear, and they uncovered my hair. And all the while I could hear my people screaming." Turning to Sigvard, the beast leered and crawled closer. "You want to kill the usurper, don't you?" he grinned. "You want to free this vessel from the one who lies. You should let me help you, pale one. I can show you a way through the mountains that the soldiers don't watch."

 

SIGVARD -

 

It was  as Urd had said. Sigvard had been in the mud, in the woods, his belly weeks empty; and at last after a hunt, however meagre, he had revelled in meat and blood as Keht did now. The Northlander slid back to a seat on the floor. He'd seen wolves feast like this, and the wild dogs in the villages. He was watchful and quiet, but when he was sure he would not be attacked, he turned his attention again to the cleaning of the knife. The rest of him—blood smeared and spattered on his arms and chest, trousers stained with goat piss and shit from his crawling retreat—couldn't be helped. It occurred to him now that Eilif had instructed them to bathe, and that the shamans' vigil would do them no good this far from the estate. There was no more promise of a dreamless sleep.   
  
He watched the kiss as he had watched the eating, as though he were in some far-off place. These were strangers to him, and only stranger in their shared secret, whatever it was that the old god had shown him. What little comfort there had been in Urd's easy serenity had gone along with it. The Northlander didn't belong in this place. He felt it like a maddening itch just under his skin.   
  
His grip on the knife tightened at the creature's approach.   
  
_ Usurper. _ He remembered, and balked: "Hamad?" He shook his head, his utter disbelief plucking at the corners of his lips in a wan smile. The ancient thing couldn't so much as guess a man's intentions. And he was meant to inspire and lead a people? Who would follow?

"No. I have no desire to kill him. Whatever Cobra has promised me, Hamad has promised me the same." A home, peace at last, whatever good it was to him now. "He has given me more than you or your vessel both—protection from those who would avenge the ambassador, and a month of shelter and food and drink, and he has paid for the shamans when I could not. All these things and more." His free hand curled into a fist, scratching at some unreachable itch in his palm. "He's given me more, and he's taken less from me." A blood pact. Little more than his word. Not his life, not his flesh. "He's lied less. Do you know—?" And here he leaned a little ways forward, before rocking back. "You were awake by then. You heard Cobra say he would stay with me, yes? And in minutes he was leaving, coming here, coming to him." A nod in the direction of Urd. "He would have left me if I had not followed. Minutes after the promise to stay." He was right not to believe it, although he didn't think it would be disproved so swiftly as that. "Hamad is not the only one who lies."   
  
He was watching Keht's body more closely now, more warily, ready to jump or to make use of that knife should the beast leap on him as he'd leapt on the goat. "If I want to free him from anyone, it's from you, I think." Eyes flashed to the purples and reds and yellows that mottled the southerner's throat. "I have never seen him do a thing like that to escape Hamad, hm? Only to escape you."

Another feeble smile, another tight jaw. The itching was like fire. "I'll leave it to him to say. Keep him, if he likes. But I will not kill Hamad."

 

KEHT -

 

"Hamad?" Keht parroted, tilting his gory face to one side. He chuckled as he put the pieces together from Sigvard's perspective. "No," he corrected him with a smile. "I understand the confusion, but I am not a seer of the future. Hamad wants to be an usurper, yes, but he is not one  _ yet _ . I speak of the scum in the Capital, the one who took my revenge from me."   
  
"That wasn't you?" Even Urd was shocked. "When he burned on the prophet's rock, I thought..."   
  
Keht raised a hand with a grimace to silence him, although he kept his eye contact with the Northlander as he ground out the words. "I do not besmirch the history of my people for the sake of such filth," he growled. "Nor do I have any power in the sea where they put me. When I returned to my lands to learn the King had been snuffed out, I knew the usurper must die in his place."

"Which brings me back to you," Keht smiled, slowly getting to his feet just to look down at the man. "You said you wanted to live in peace in your homeland, yes? I want to go there also. Which means the one you call Cobra must come, too."   
  
A hand at his hip, hooked onto his belt like a child. He glanced over his shoulder to see Urd's imploring face. "You will leave the land again?" the man asked, a sad furrow in his brow.    
  
Finally, pity. The look seemed so foreign, so mature on Cobra's face. He reached out to cup the man's cheek, cracking half a grin at how easy it was.

"How short this body is," he murmured. "But you are the same, and strong, Urd. You will watch over the tribe and I will return to you once I have found the answers I have been looking for."    
  
Urd's wide mouth pressed into a tight line and he frowned, yet nodded all the same, looping his arms around the man's waist as inhaling the air at his hip as though he could make a memory of the warmth.   
  
"You really think Cobra is destined to be a god?" Keht asked curiously, looking back to Sigvard. "You are right, he does lie, and he is weak in many aspects that make him far from a deity. But his fury, oh," he laughed, "His fury matches even mine. The fires, the slaughters. I see it too. If you really want to follow him... it will be a long and fearsome journey for you. I can control his flesh and show him visions, but I cannot force him to show you the kind of kindness you had with your wife. Do you understand?"    
  
Sighing, he considered the situation, Sigvard exhausted and Urd at his hip. The goatherds waiting back at the palace. "I can give him back to you now," he reasoned. "But he will be angry. If you want, we can at least make it back to the palace where there are pillows to sleep on."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The small tent was silent, the air within it growing thick with the stench of blood and shit. Sigvard had listened in quiet patience, all those questions coming back to him now after the act of killing, knitting the muscles in his face. He had held the knife close to him. And he had watched, with plain curiosity and plainer envy, the men take each other up in that gentle sort of embrace.   
  
But his gaze had dropped suddenly at the prospect of Cobra's return. His godling would want to be back, yes, in control of his own body; and if Sigvard was meant to speak for him, he ought to have had Keht submit just as soon as he'd made the offer. But there was silence. A new tension in his naked shoulders. He ran his thumb across the blade to check the edge of it.   
  
"Wait," he muttered, finally. A cold heat came over him as soon as he did. "There are things I don't understand." Blue eyes stared at the mangled goat, unblinking. It was maybe the only thing in the room more pitiful than he was. "You want to kill the usurper King—you want to get your amber and things, you mean to go to the Capital, I understand this. But what is for you in the Northlands...? Why will you go there?" He might have been asking the goat, the way he stared. "And then you mean to come back. You mean to go to him in the end." His jaw flicked in the direction of Urd. "You will do this, but Cobra has said he would stay." He couldn't manage to articulate the full thought,  _ with me _ , and so his face soured, and he seemed to have to force his next breath. "What am I meant to do then?"

The soldier pulled his legs up a little, bent at the knee just enough that he could loop a loose embrace around them and make a fortress of himself. "Urd. You spoke of healing the wound with this slaughter. Why—? What interest do you have in healing wounds between him and I? You mean to take him forever, as Keht, but it's Cobra that I have love for."   
  
A disastrous thing to say. He knew it as the words left his mouth, and the little fortress slumped, his voice going feeble with uncertainty and the terror of isolation in this strange land. "Doesn't that make enemies of us?"

 

KEHT -

 

Sigvard did not have long to admire the goat; the tent flaps opened, letting in the night air, and two women murmured thanks in Urdai tongue as they carried the carcass out. Judging by the knives on their belts, they would skin and butcher it for the camp fire. A goat was too valuable to waste for a desert-dwelling tribe, even on a god.

Keht waited for him, Cobra’s blue eyes patient and quizzical. The question made him smile; the brute was smarter than the angry one gave him credit for, sometimes, although he had an awful habit of suspecting the worst in people. Life had been too cruel. “You ask a lot of a god,” he gave an easy grin. “Have you ever met a god of your home; of the Northlands? I am looking for a friend I once knew, from long, long ago. When the ancient city was little more than a crude temple, from before magic came to the pale man. If he was a god, he would still be alive, and bound to a vessel like this, I am free to leave the desert. But after that... I could return. You would need to bring me back to the ancient city, but with my artefacts, I could make a home in any other Urdai, not just those who who were born fated.”

Urd’s grip tightened slightly around the deity’s hips. “You will come home,” the chief murmured, nodding hopefully. Keht returned the gesture with a single nod of his own. The taller man lifted his head with raised eyebrows as Sigvard made such a flowering observation. He wanted to laugh, but the mirth did not come. With so many feelings already running through him, all that was left to show on his face was a serene bemusement. Politeness.

“You do not understand many things,” he smiled. “This body... I have known it, but I have known many others, too. All of them Keht. We Urdai are a very old people. There is always Urd, and there is always Keht.” He placed a hand on his chest, although the slight shrug that followed gave away his worth that he was not doing the best job of getting his point across with his limited common tongue. “It does not need to be this one,” he tried, patting Kent’s hip. “Do you understand?”

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander's breath was shallower and shallower through parted lips, his body fidgeting as if each new bit of information was one more weight on his shoulders. His bloodshot eyes went to Urd, first. He nodded. "I understand this, Cobra has told me." He'd thought it was only titles, back then; that there was always an Urd and a Keht in the sense that there was always a king, a shaman, a father. But even he had grasped by now that it was different. Two souls, the same for all time. Still: "I thought—" He caught his tongue, glancing to Keht. "I suppose I thought the vessel had to die. That you were bound to him until his ending." It was near impossible to try and navigate this thought without making mention of that fated drowning, but he did make an attempt, with obvious strain. He didn't want to anger the beast with the memory. Or frighten him.   
  
"And would you?" He pressed on, looking up at the thing that made a puppet of his little god's body. "If I took you to the Capital, and to your god friend, and the ancient city. You would leave him, you would swear it?" He was allowing himself to be hopeful. He felt it stir in him, a sapling, and just as soon cut it down. He knew his exhaustion and desperation made it mortally dangerous to pin his hopes on anything or anyone among the savages. He would need to sleep, first. He would need to come at it with more sense.   
  
Mulling his tongue, his usual signal of deep thought, he pushed his heels among the furs and the sand to find a cooler spot for them. "I have met many gods, but most of them younger than your friend, I think. We should talk to the shamans in the morning. They would know. They keep the stories of the gods and such things." Ah, and now he remembered: "Olrun, too. You recognized this name, yes? I know some of her fables, but they will be able to tell you of her."

 

KEHT -

 

"Had to? No," the deity's eyes hardened as he inevitably recalled the day he had drowned. "But I will not forsake my vessel to avoid such a thing. I do not fear death for I am above death, you understand. Before the fire-slaves outgrew their ugly city and enslaved us, I had inhabited that flesh for over two hundred years. Once the water took his last breath, I could not help him any more. To survive someone so dear to you is a terrible thing, I'm sure you know. And now, without my amber... I can barely change this body."    
  
He sighed, sunning his fingers back through his raven hair. It turned out half an inch, perhaps one inch longer at the most. He felt the disappointingly short locks in his fingers and cast his eyes on Urd's turban, knowing the length that waited underneath. The chief chuckled, slowly getting to his feet. "Are you getting vain, Keht?"

"I was always vain," the god shrugged, "But not as beautiful as I once was. That cannot be helped. But it does not matter if I am to leave this body so soon. Come," he approach the pale man, holding  out his hand to help him up. "I will swear it, but first I would like you to walk with me, and tell me of the gods you have met. I do not think these child-gods were the friend I once knew, but perhaps their tales hold clues as to his current form. After that woman came down from the mountain, he never visited me again."

 

SIGVARD -

 

There was an empty beat where the Northlander eyed the offered hand. Not suspicion, not mistrust, not quite. Bizarrely, the spectacle of the goat-killing had done something to foster in him a sense of faith in Keht and Urd and their people. He only didn't know what to make of his own newfound comfort in sitting cross-legged, covered in filth, and talking of the return of an ancient spirit to his homeland. Desperation, maybe, or magic, or a return to madness after all this time.   
  
There was no space to think of it. His palm clapped into Keht's, and he hauled his heavy body up—and standing, now, he turned to Urd to proffer the knife. That the chief hadn't asked for it was the point. It had been a symbol of peace and goodwill from the desert lord on his arrival; and now, it was the only thing of the sort that Sigvard could offer freely in return. "Please," he murmured, gently urging him to take the hilt. Docile. Like the goat had been, tied to the post.   
  
The cool night air was welcome on his hot skin, although it did remind him of the mess of blood on his chest and arms that was now drying to a tack. Cobra was his first thought. Keht had said he would be angry when he woke. And if he woke like  _ this _ , so completely covered in gore that it would be all he could taste and see and smell, he expected there to be horror, too. It would be better to bathe again.   
  
His blue eyes settled to his feet, and he was able now to concentrate partly on learning to walk against the pull of the sand. Breathing still didn't come quite easy.

"Among my people," he began with some care, "most gods are kings of men. Not all kings or lords are gods, of course, least of all among the plainspeople—but a worthy god will take a following and inspire them to greatness, and conquer lands, and make a king of himself in this way. Most gods I have met are like this." He looked to Keht for understanding, here; although the crease in his brow made it clear this was as simple as he could imagine putting it. He watched the land again. "There are shit gods, cruel and wrathful and liars. I fear Cobra will be like this, I have told him. They find some glory on the backs of their men, but they are cut down before long. I remember there was one in my childhood, Alfver—he had betrayed his lord and made traitors and cowards of his soldiers. They came to my village for some months and stole in secrecy, and rarely fought or killed for what they took. I am sure I saw him in the dark, once. But I was an infant. I don't know if he lives."   
  
He had begun to work out a gait that allowed him to keep his arms at his sides, rather than bowed out. But then there was that damned sticky blood where skin met skin. "The wicked ones are rare, as they will quickly be killed for their tyranny, as I said. I have known many more noble gods who have done feats and lead their men with strength and honour. I met Runa in a hamlet once; it's said she walks from east to west across the continent to visit her conquering daughters at either seaside." The irony of his strain to manage a mere fifty feet in the desert was not lost on him. With a grunt, he carried on: "I was hired to fight for Lefsi for a time, who has razed a kingdom in vengeance of his slain father. And I was dining with Ulfarr the night his hall caught fire. I watched him bellow to keep the flames at bay."

Blunt fingertips, blackened with grime, raked helplessly at the fresh tangles in his hair. "There is one, too, I have always thought of." A complicated silence followed the words. He had the memory. His eyes held it in front of him, just out of arm's reach. "When I was younger. This would have been a short time after I last watched Cobra, no more than a year or two after, I think." A rumbling noise caught stuck in his throat betrayed his hesitance. "I had been—" There was a simpler way to say it. "I was starved," he decided. "He gave me a bit of bread, and called himself Brunn. I knew he was a god, then. I can't put it to words. But I have not met him since."

Again, he looked to Keht, who in his mask of blood was more and more unrecognizable as the man he'd known as Cobra. "Do you know any of these? Like Olrun—have you heard their names, or do you have a sense of them?"

 

KEHT -

 

He hauled the man up almost effortlessly, Cobra's limbs were strong, but the boon of his meal did wonders for Keht's abilities. With warmth in his eyes he took the dagger, glad, at least, that the man no longer saw him as so much of a threat. To say that he was not dangerous would be wrong, perilously so, but malicious? No. His spite had to be earned, and it was so much easier to keep a level head when there was no hunger gnawing at his belly. Even Cobra's presence, inside him now, had gone quiet, although the deity supposed that he must have given up the struggle to regain control a long while ago. The effort would have been immense. It was good, really; he would sleep soon after returning to consciousness.   
  
When he walked with the man, he did so as if the sand was not trying to suck his feet at all. Still, he kept a slower pace than he was capable of, listening patiently to the huffing man's tales and nodding on occasion. Many  of the names are strange and foreign to him. "I heard of Olrun, yes, and the stories of Ulfarr, but I was not always lingering at the mountain pass. I would only go there once a year or so. None of the other names sound familiar, nor do they sound like his, but it is hard to recall without my ring." His brow furrowed as he recalled the artifact's image in his mind, but it held none of the potency of holding it in his hands.

"We agreed to marry, once," he recalled dreamily. "The Urdai do not do this thing in the same way that other peoples do, so it was of little consequence to me.  That is why I have the ring. Still, for the King to take it, that was a great offense to me, as much as taking the heart of the tree." He looked back at the sands as they departed, breathing deeply to stave off his anger.    
  
"Perhaps he changed his name," he mused. "He was a kind soul, but the glimmer in his eyes spoke of mischief, sometimes. The one who gave you bread, that sounds like something he would do. He once slaughtered me a goat during a time when men in the ancient city denounced me, when no blood was offered. But that was very long ago, before the ancient city fell."   
  
He lifted his head as the thought occurred to him. "Is Olrun still alive?" he asked. "Did she use the magic to keep her body from aging, or did she allow herself to die?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Having grasped the fundamentals of walking—only a mere twenty-some years since infancy—Sigvard watched the prophet's face with quiet curiosity. It was strange to see him speak with such fondness. He remembered meeting Keht in the baths, and the gentle way he had cooed about a bond between them; but that was something wholly different from this, now, and the sweetness he had showed Urd in the tent. Since then, of course, he had only known the spirit for his bitterness and his cruelty. Love and nostalgia looked almost foreign on Cobra's face.   
  
It was another moment before he parsed the question being asked of him. He nodded, and spoke softly, still watching the smaller man with keen interest. "She lives, I think. There are fables of her from many hundreds of years ago, but more recent, too. Lefsi, the avenger—I've heard it said that the spear he carries was first given to his grandfather by Olrun." A thought seemed to occur to him, and he stepped closer to share it: "In stories, she does not always go by that name, but her manner and the strength of her magic expose her. It might be that your lover disguises himself like this, too, by using other names."   
  
Wind washed from the sea and took the last of his wine-fever with it. His eyes were clearing. His voice and his thoughts, too. He remembered Cobra telling him about the ring, the would-be marriage, and the King's ugly sense of injustice. He could not hide the incredulity in his voice as he wondered aloud: "He did not come for you." This, as much as the game of ancient spirits, vexed him tremendously. Visibly so. "You were promised to him, but he did not see you again after Olrun brought down the mountain's magic—why? When you were taken and your vessel killed, why did he not come and fight for you, and bring you home again...?"

 

KEHT -

 

When the desert sands gave way to dirt road and sandstone, the deity seemed to lose some of the grace in his movement, as if each step were slightly reluctant instead of a calculated movement following its own rhythm. He enjoyed it less here, that much was true. Yet he recognised the necessity, and he would be lying if he claimed that a piece of him was not curious as to what the shamen planned to do with the clothes that had been selected earlier that day.   
  
"We should bathe," he mused idly, coming to the same idea as the blond after noting the wall guard's near-panicked reaction at the mess of gore on them both. Back to the door frame, the guards let them past, eyes flicking to the road as if they expected wolves and savages to be in pursuit.    
  
"Is that so?" he pondered. "Perhaps I will meet her someday. It does give me hope that my friend still walks among us, going by a different name. He must be very old, to have walked the earth before the age of man."

He raised his eyebrows at the man's passionate reaction, finding it hard to connect to the outrage, especially now that he had a belly full of blood. Perhaps yesterday, he could have followed that line of thought, but not now. "I have the same question too, but I do not begrudge him for not coming to my rescue. Some gods cannot tread beyond their lands, just as I could not, without a vessel to carry me. We only ever met in the mountain pass where it was decided that our domains should share a border. And besides," his smile darkened. "I would not want my revenge taken away from me."   
  
It already had been, but he left that fact unspoken. There was no changing it now. "He'll be tired when he returns," Keht sighed. "Do your best to get him to sleep, and I can guide his dreams. If you are lucky, he will not be angry in the morning."

 

SIGVARD -

 

So there was some logic to it, enough to render Sigvard speechless, although he was not quite content. His ideas of what made a good man of the Northlands, and certainly a good husband, had been crystallized in childhood; and although he himself was an embarrassment in both respects, he felt that a god should at least have been loyal and strong and brave for his lover. There must have been something to it, as Keht had said. He chewed his cheek and put it to rest for now.   
  
Mindlessly, he guided the both of them to the baths, which felt to him much more like the comfort of  _ home _ than Cobra's quarters. The slave's bed, and table, and terrace had served as a stage for such plays of anger and terror and disgust that sleep didn't have a chance of peace. "I can take his anger, now, I think," he mused. "I was—" A caught breath. He had been drunk, and tired, and miserable. These things had been eased for him, at least, even if a sense of dreadful loneliness still dragged his shoulders down. He watched the ceiling at the end of the hall, where ripples of light from the water's surface played. "You are strong, I see that now. And generous. It was good to go and see Urd. It has helped me. I will tell him what you've said."   
  
Entering the grand bath, he let the lap of the water fill silence as he fetched a rag and a bucket, intending to scrub most of the mess away before entering the water. It had taken him three or four sharp reprimands, in these last weeks, to learn not to spoil the pool by going straight in.   
  
"The shamans, they hold a vigil," he explained, coming to the prophet's side. "They've said there won't be dreams for us tonight. I can send a message to them to do away with the idea, if you mean to show him something." Hesitant, his eyes went to Keht's mouth, and neck, and chest, and where goat's blood had ruined the brilliant blue of his coverall. "May I bathe you? I have questions, still, if you'll permit me."

 

KEHT -

 

"If that is what you wish. Perhaps the confusion will distract him; I continue to see while I am not in control, but Cobra does not, at least, not without great struggle. He will be startled to be so far away from Urd's tent so suddenly." He mused, following after the man. The baths felt familiar to his too, but how could they not? Cobra had come here countless times over the years, drawn to the water that was sourced from one of the land's rivers. It was only natural.   
  
He nodded at the admiration, a proud set to his brow that spoke acknowledgement without verbally committing to any thanks. It was all true, after all; perhaps not while he had been hungry and savage, but with a level head he was a noble thing. Far more noble than most 'nobles' in this godless Navan. Still, for all their despicable ways, they had not harmed the Urdai in the same way as the men in the Capital. It was one of the reasons he had led the escaped slave here in the first place.(edited)

"Do they now?" he frowned slightly at the information. "I would be interested to see if the singing children of the hill could stop me, but I will not fight them if they claim to be friends. I prefer to dream, it helps me feel peace, but I can do without it for one night if it will make this body more rested. He has been in great turmoil for some time, and my presence is partly to blame." Reaching back to undo the tie behind his neck, he stripped bare.    
  
"Oh?" The deity looked Sigvard's way with mild surprise at the request. The praise he had expected, but he had assumed the man would want him to relinquish control to the angry little would-be god with more haste. "You may," he shrugged, taking a seat on the tiles a short distance from the bath where the gore from his face would not foul the pool. "I don't believe I have ever been bathed before. Of course, before I took a vessel, there was never any need."   
  


SIGVARD -

 

There was an eagerness to Sigvard's next movements. A sense of duty, of purpose, however small, had breathed new energy into his weary body; he was quick to nod, to slip out of his soiled pants and toss them aside, and to squat by the poolside to carefully fill the bucket.   
  
He kneeled before Keht as one would before an altar. His gaze was on his own hands, dipping into the water, sweeping away the grime that had etched dark into the lines of his skin and around the nails he'd chewed to the quick. "It's a pleasant thing," he murmured, of bathing. Taking the rag up, he dipped it, wrung it, and dipped it again so that it was swollen and dripping. "It's done between friends and lovers in my country. In the hot springs, less so the river." One hand, empty, lifted to gently shield the prophet's eyes; the other brought the cloth above his head, and squeezed once, twice, and again around the crown of it to soak his hair. "It's an intimate thing." The slosh of the rag in the bucket, and another rinsing of his dark locks. He'd so often wished to do this with Cobra. Before it became a hazard to touch him.   
  
Both hands fell, then, so that blue eyes could watch the other's. There was the faintest wrinkle in his forehead, and so he explained it: "We hold the belief that there are spirits in all things. The rivers, and trees, and all this." A finger curled beneath the southerner's chin, so that he could hold the full weight of his head as he dragged the damp cloth slowly and gingerly across his brow. "Before you took a vessel—" Turning the rag to a clean edge, he cleared his temple, the bridge of his nose, and finally one closed eye. "Was it like this for you? Are you a spirit of the desert, or some such thing?" He rinsed the cloth out, and set about washing the rest of his face with the same steady patience. "Urd said the land had missed you. You were able to show him home, he said, but how is this possible? What things do you see?"

 

KEHT -

 

The deity seemed to have vague reservations about the man's sudden eagerness, keeping him fixed with a somewhat wary eye where he knelt. Still, when he settled into the task, some of the mania calming in his eyes, Keht was soothed in turn, relaxing his shoulders and letting the man carry on with the wash cloth. With a quiet hum he stared at a blank spot on the wall, the inkling of a memory coming to him. It floated away before he could grasp it, not knowing at all where to grasp in the first place. Foggy. Troublesome. He missed his amber dearly.    
  
"I did not see much of it in the North," he said seriously, skirting around the subject of Cobra's childhood as he sat in front of the man so he could wash his hair comfortably. "I like water, but there is often not much of it in the desert. We Urdai bathe with the sand; it takes the sweat and grime away. Smoke and ash helps, too. " To speak of such mundane things had a therapeutic quality. IF nothing else, he liked the way it filled the quiet.

"Is this intimacy?" he tilted his head.  A faint smile quirked his lips as his fingers traced the bruises ringing his neck. "Perhaps I am not so familiar with the feeling. There have been very few men I share intimacy with." A quiet chuckle as he placed his hand over the bruises but applied to pressure. The recollections distracted him, somewhat, though he looked back to the man with raised eyebrows when more questions came.   
  
"You said you did not want to see it," he chided, reaching out to give the big man's cheek two pats. The gesture would have been familiar to a tribesman, but most likely not this Northlander. "Hrm," he frowned. "I see... figments of myself, in dreams. They call me the way-finder. Even before I was bound in the flesh of the prophet, I would lead the Urdai through the desert. I remember this. And to say the land has missed me, this is something that has been said for centuries. It has a great meaning, I think. I understood better before my treasures were taken from me."

His face grew sad, forcing the kind of smile that left his eyes empty. Breathing in through his nose, he swelled on the visions the blood he brought Urd and himself, and the smile gained its warmth. “Home,” he repeated wistfully. “The Ancient city, before it fell. We grew jasmine there, and lavender; grain. There are hardy crops that can survive in the dirt where mountains reach desert. There was a temple for me once, too, I think... Lost, now.” He grew quiet again, eyeing the edge of the pool.

“Am I clean?” He asked, looking into the man’s eyes as he upturned his palms. “I cannot be pure, I think, but my flesh can be clean enough.”

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander watched his work, hearing Keht speak of home and jasmine and crops, and made the image of it in his mind's eye. Crude imagination would have to do. He had not asked the prophet to show him, and he would not ask for it now now; he was sure that if he did, he wouldn't have a hope of sleep. So he carried on washing. Clearing thick and blackened blood from Keht's tender throat, he stopped himself before wondering aloud about the fate of the ancient city, and what exactly the man had seen of it then.   
  
As soon as the question was asked of him, he frowned and held a half-breath. It wasn't for him to say, he thought. "Cobra is very particular about his washing," he muttered. "But I suppose you are, yes." Certainly, if he felt the need, clean enough to go into the water without staining it with blood. For his own part, Sigvard turned his gaze downward to inspect the dark mess on his chest and in his lap, and sniffed at the faint smell of goat urine where it had soaked through his trousers. So much like the battlefield. He was only missing the mud.   
  
He took up the rag, then, and set about scrubbing his own broad chest. "Will you—?" Consternation in his face. He didn't seem to know how to ask. "Your lover. You said he was kind. Will you tell me what you remember of him?"

 

KEHT -

 

"I suspect he loves the solitude," Keht voices his observation evenly, letting his gave drag back from the pool. "The draw to water is most likely due to my presence. It is not such a bad thing. It kept him alive when he was in the desert." Despite being told he was clean enough now, he waited watching the man curiously as he scrubbed at his chest until the pale flesh turned up pink. He couldn't very well carry on the conversation from underwater, after all.    
  
"My lover?" the deity repeated with some surprise. "The god in the mountains? No. My lover is Urd. That is not to say that I do not feel love for my friend, but it is not the same as the connection between Urd and I."

 

SIGVARD -

 

This news plainly came as some surprise to Sigvard. Not that the prophet counted Urd among his lovers—he had seen as much in the tent—but that he  _ didn't _ count the northern spirit. His scrubbing slowed, as he watched the man again. "But you were married, once...?" His was a hopeful curiosity, and if it hadn't showed by now, it was beginning to. The mountain-god was a thread that tied this terrible place to home, somehow; he was a pillar, now, for all the soldier’s hopes of a future. "Did he misunderstand it, between you, was it unrequited?"   
  
As soon as he'd asked, he seemed to realize it didn't quite matter. He shook his head. "Your friend, then. What do you remember of your friend?"

 

KEHT -

 

His eyes flicked back and forth between the man and the water at slow, regular intervals. It never even occurred to him to return the favour by washing Sigvard; why would it, when he was a god? And he was not accustomed to these things. If the man had asked, perhaps for some of his blood, he might have obliged, but he doubted that a foreigner would ask for such a thing. "We agreed to marry, yes," he nodded, the lack of association clear in his expression. "Must you fuck, to be married? Is that how it works? I have already told you that we Urdai do not do this thing. I don't recall the conversation very clearly, but I know there was a ring."   
  
He sighed, a longing gaze at the water. Sulking fingers through his medium crop of hair, still nowhere near as long as it should be to suit his sense of self. "Goat bells," he murmured. "He had animals with him, often. His face was pale and his eyes were pale too, but his hair was darker, I think. Yes, it used to catch the light in a golden way. He carried a staff. When he told me tales of the things he had done, I don't believe any of the things were ever done in fury, and that was startling to me. I wondered if there were any humans in his lands at all. How could there be no atrocities if humans still dwelled? How could he not bleed and weep and scream for his land? It was a mystery, and so I kept returning." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander's face puzzled severely on hearing the god's interpretation of marriage, or rather lack thereof. He understood that there were gaps in Keht's memory, but he supposed he had expected the details of something as fundamental as a lifelong promise—and so an immortal one—to remain. For regardless of whether or not it was important to the Urdai, he felt it must have been a serious matter to a god of his own land, where the tradition was held as sacred.   
  
"Usually, yes, there is fucking," he answered. "But it's much more than that; so that you could have marriage without fucking, I think." He hadn't really given this option any consideration until this point, but could reason it out here and now. "What I mean to say is that it's a strange thing to be married but not be lovers—but 'lovers,' this word, I don't consider it about the fucking." Maybe it was a failing in his understanding of the common tongue. It wouldn't be the first. "Love, yes, and intimacy, of a sort. These things make lovers. But—even bathing is intimate. Bathing is not fucking. You see?"   
  
Perhaps he did and perhaps he didn't. Sigvard went back to washing, picking up the pace of it, dragging the rag rough over his skin, freeing himself of the sickening grime. He was clean, or  _ clean enough _ , when the prophet was done his recollection.   
  
He nodded, vaguely, and grunted his understanding, and turned to push his heavy body into the water. "This sounds, in a way, like the Brunn I had met as a boy," he murmured from above the pool's surface when it had settled. "But it sounds like a great many other men, too." In later years, he'd come to know a dark-haired thing in Alvsten who carried a staff. He was sure that this was not the same man. "He must have been merciful—our land is not free of atrocity. War and killing and raiding is common, and always the taking of things, and of thralls. There are men like Cobra's father. More of them, I'm sure."

 

KEHT -

 

The god seemed a little amused at the man's deep confusion. "Do not forget that I am not a man," he said serenely, running his fingers down the side of his vessel's face. "Many of your customs are trivial to me. Perhaps it was trivial to us, too. Amusements. Our duties extend far beyond the scope of just one soul, after all." Rising, he made for the edge of the pool. He could no longer stay patient enough when his time of consciousness was drawing so close to an end, and he sat on the edge and lowered his legs into the water with a blissful sigh.   
  
"Lovers are not just about fucking, this is true," he said with a grin that spoke of secrets. "Although you seem to do a lot of it. Almost as much as the fighting, of late. Even without my presence, your relationship would be very difficult, I think. The night tent put violence in his head where tenderness should be. I know, because I saw it. Men like Cobra's father, or just bad enough to be complicit. I have eaten many men like this over the millennia, I know very well just how many of them exist."

His eyes crinkled at the corners, teeth bared in a sly grin as he looked away, wondering only for a very brief moment if he should have disclosed the kind of horrific punishment he had dealt to wicked souls in the past. It was of little matter, he decided, for Sigvard finally seemed to understand the difference between Keht and Cobra; the separation between them despite being housed in the same flesh.   
  
"Would you like him back?" he piped up, playing with the surface of the water with his hands. "I can give him to you now, if you like."

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard’s lips parted at all this about fighting and fucking—he remembered what the god had once said about  _ defilement _ , and wondered if he had nothing but disgust for the act itself. It would certainly explain the outlandish idea that there had been  _ a lot _ of it, that a week of frenzy could compare with near a month of bitterness and no touch at all. Was he so accustomed to misery and unaccustomed to intimacy that these chapters between Sigvard and Cobra had been the same in his mind?   
  
He wouldn’t ask. Just as soon as he meant to, his stomach was turning. The image of men, mangled like the goat had been.   
  
Of course he’d understood that Keht was capable; Urd had warned him that he might have killed a man, and Sig was not so naive as to think that the killing would be the end of it. But he’d thought that would have been an act of desperation, of starvation. Not a deliberate choice, a sentencing, and  _ many _ over thousands of years.   
  
There was an uncomfortable noise at the question, a flush to his skin, as he was still trying to dismiss the little play going in his mind’s eye between that smiling mouth and the flesh of a man. He looked to the water’s surface. There were more questions, always more questions, of his life and his amber and of Urd especially. But he would see the thing again. He nodded. “Yes,” he whispered, not moving his gaze. Now to shore himself up for Cobra’s wrath. “Could you turn away? I do not want to be the first thing he sees.” His brow furrowed. “Unless he would prefer it that way; do you think he would? And—you’ve said he will be tired, too tired to sit? Is there a danger of him falling in the water?”

 

KEHT -

 

The man's reaction was not unfamiliar to Keht. He even smiled in response - wide, toothy, knowing. Perhaps not helpful, but not dishonest, either. "Do not feel shame," he purred, traces of his former pride returning. "There has only ever been one man to know me without fear. Hrrm, or perhaps two," he frowned, the pride fading again. He turned his gaze back to the water, as if it might reflect the truth back to him. Nothing but ripples.

Sighing, he tightened his grip on the pool's edge and lowered himself into the water, closing his eyes at the cool sensation. "Do not worry," he murmured. "You will not be the first thing he sees." Evidently, this was because he promptly submerged himself, slipping underwater feet-first in a graceful curve that had him skimming the bottom of the pool. There, face up, he saw the surface of the water and felt the rush of the blood in his own ears. A pang of loss, of death, the thrill of rebirth looming imminent. He remembered all of these things before he closed his eyes and opened them again as Cobra.   
  
Shock took him first, then the need to breathe like a fire, stoked by the feeling of bizarre fullness from a meal he did not recall which drove him to the surface as soon as possible. Gasping, he recognised Hamad's bathing chamber immediately, and it was only then that the wave of emotion pushed the scream from his throat. Not a word, just raw and animal, slashing at the top of the water with his hand like a knife. Fury, indeed. Great craters of water rose up where he slammed down his fists.

To Sigvard's great fortune, or perhaps not, he was angrier with another than he was with the hulking blonde. "He fucked me!" he roared, bottom teeth bared in the special brand of disgust that anyone would feel for being used. "Just to get closer to his god! He  _ lied _ to me!" It was hard to distinguish tears from the water of the bath, but he could feel the snivelling in his face. Grimacing, he fought off the pathetic hiccup to no avail, feeling utterly helpless in his sudden displacement. Dipping his head under the water, he rubbed furiously at his eyes before crawling out of the bath.   
  
"Get me a towel," he ordered, voice wavering. "I am tired."

 


	15. Paying Visits

SIGVARD -

 

For a fleeting moment, the soldier didn't move from his place in the bath. Silence was strange. Shrieks had come like knives to his ears, echoed ten times over against the pool's surface and against stone. The water still lapped at his body in quiet complaint of Cobra's assault. All that fury, and terror, and grief, all of it in a glimpse. He'd been stunned by it.   
  
At last, dutifully, he waded to the water's edge and pulled himself up; there was the rain-sound of his dripping body, and the slap of wet feet towards the bench where the plush towels sat pristine. He collected an armful.   
  
That slap of wet feet stopped two steps short of Cobra. He was afraid, still. Of course he was afraid; the last weeks had instilled in him a terror of closeness that he'd never known, and the little excursion to Urd had done nothing to help the matter, and nor had the southerner's wild display of righteous rage. From that fear, his automatic reaction should have been to take one of the towels and thrust it out at arm's length.   
  
He must have been a fundamentally stupid creature, then, or a masochist, or both; for when he heard the falter in his godling's voice, he couldn't manage to keep himself at a safe distance. "Here," he murmured pointlessly, shuffling closer. All but two towels dropped to his feet, and he swung one 'round Cobra's shoulders now, pulling it snug, to warm him. The other, he lifted over his hair—thick fingers pushed it this way and that through the man's dark locks, although he wasn't altogether thorough before he used it instead to brush at his teary cheeks. Soft, slow, with the same care he'd washed Keht's face.

"You are tired," he parroted, curling the fabric gently under the slave's eye. "Would you like me to take you to bed...? Or would sea air do you good, on the terrace, or in the gardens?" His naked thumb passed where the towel had been. Hushed: "There are curious things Keht has said, things I must tell you. But we can discuss it tomorrow, after Eilif has seen you."

 

COBRA -

 

In the echoing chamber of the bathroom with little more than the drip of water on tile and his own thoughts, Sigvard's hesitation cut like a knife dragged slow across his back. Wincing, the man felt the heat of a fresh sob in his eyes before mercifully, mercifully whether he was aware of it or not, the blonde drew close enough to drape the towel around his shoulders.    
  
Vision blurred around the edges, it was all Cobra could do to stare up at him, all of the options given to him ringing deaf in his ears. He listened to all of it, tears streaming down his cheeks no matter how Sigvard tried to wipe them away, and then he thrust his face into the man's chest with a sniff. Fingers found their way around the man's waist, clinging tight based on the wild thought that the man might try to remove him, that he might be rejected again.

"No," he said finally, eyes shut tight, but what the word was an answer to, who knew? "No, stay with me. I can... I can say it if you want." A flinch ran through him and his jaw pulled tight, regretting the bargain almost immediately. Who knew if Sigvard would even care. Perhaps he thought him weak, now. Perhaps he'd hate him forever. He clung tight, refusing to budge. "I don't want to."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The towel was abandoned to the floor just as soon as Cobra's arms flung around him. Sigvard knew this. He'd been held like this before, long ago by now. His own embrace came a little more gently, one thick arm across the southerner's back, one laid heavy on his shoulders so that he could rest his wide palm in his still-damp hair. "It's all right, little thing," he hummed, low voice rumbling in his chest. The fact he didn't at all understand what exactly Cobra was talking about didn't seem to matter. "It'll all turn out, I promise you." Blunt fingertips made circles in the man's curls, rubbing softly against his scalp. "Everything will be alright before long."   
  
The Northlander's wide hand, left on Cobra's back, now swept over the towel in an attempt to warm him a little—pointless, given the climate, but an instinct all the same. His voice fell to a whisper, recalling Cobra's panic with a pinched brow: "What is it you think I want you to say...?" Rather than draw back to try and investigate his master's face, he tugged him impossibly closer, and pushed his nose and lips into his hair. "What don't you want to do? The ceremony?"

 

COBRA -

 

His eyes opened, or at least one of them did, for the other was pressed too close to the warmth of the man's chest. A chill ran through him as the word  _ ashi _ hung titanic over his head. Or perhaps it was just the idea of her, this women the man had loved who had not made him afraid, who did not hurt him and spoil things in the same way that he had. He hesitated to bring it up now, wondering if he would think him foolish. Cowed, perhaps due to the confusion of being so suddenly displaced by Keht's presence, he took the long way in getting to the point.   
  
"In don't like to be compared," he murmured. "Whether it's pretending to have the name of some boy or girl from back in their village, or pretending that we weren't in that night tent at all. I hate it, Sigvard. I cannot be like the wife you had. I can't live up to her memory. We are not the same." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

A long, withering breath had the taste and the sound of grief. He understood. It was coming to the understanding that had put the pit in his chest, and now he had the job of explaining the absurdity of it—of telling Cobra that he was not at all like the men in the tent, not in this way. But he had only words, and didn't think they would be enough. He'd make the attempt regardless.   
  
His body began to sway a little ways, very gently, very slowly, like a bough in a soft wind. "I don't want you to be her." A momentary silence to breathe. He found he couldn't do it evenly without concentrating, and the image of the bath was too much; so his eyes fell gently closed. "I have her memory, I take it with me. I go to it when I am alone and afraid. When I asked you to say that word—" His jaw, pressed into Cobra's hair, tightened and released. "I didn't know who I was speaking to, Cobra. I was out of my mind." The drug, the desperation, the sheer exhaustion. "I would not have asked this thing of you if my head was clearer, I swear it."   
  
Words weren't enough. That, or they were failing him. His shoulders fell, his embrace tightened. "I do not want you to be her. Or like her. She is her own thing in my soul, and I don't want to pervert her memory by having someone imitate it." The difficulty of speaking was more and more apparent. "I love you for what you are to me, not anything more complicated than that. I love you because you are strong, and clever, and you have ambition." Here, at last, a smile broke, and a helpless sort of laugh. "She was none of these things."

A momentary silence to breathe. His lids lifted to slivers, at least. "I understand that tenderness is hard for you. It was not easy for me, at first. But there are times when I am weak, just as there are times when you are, and I will need to fall on your strength and your comfort. I will need these things like air." His hands went to quiet work again, stroking the pads of his fingers over naked skin. "I want to give you my life, I want to trust you in this way. If you will take my strength but not my weakness, this place will be the end for me. Do you understand?" Tempted again to draw back, to look, he kept still. "I understand it is hard, but will you try? When I am weak. Will you try to think of me, and show me your love?"

 

COBRA -

 

His body followed the movements of the man's gentle swaying, learning it like a dance. The words gave him such hope, such a feeling of elation in his chest; he  ceased his frantic clinging, just an embrace now, and lifted his head to inspect the man's face. Inspect it for lies, maybe, for he'd be lying himself if he claimed there wasn't still a streak of suspicion and cynicism in his core. But there was no devious plotting in the man's blue eyes, and how could there ever be something like that there? As more pieces of the puzzle finally slid into place, the man felt his cheeks heat up with embarrassment, of all things.   
  
"Am I clever?" the words came out in a flustered splutter, laced with laughter. The drugs, yes; of course he had been delirious. His usual suspicions had put the thought of being compared in his head and they had not been on speaking terms to talk the idea out. How stupid he had been. He looked away, reluctant to meet the man's eye now when he had scrutinised it so closely before, but his hands gave the flesh at the man's sides a gentle squeeze.    
  
"I'll try," he said gently, feeling the seeds of doubt even now. Such chaos he'd caused already. "At times it feels like I don't even know what my love means."

A new thought occurred to him, making his lips press together tightly. He swallowed, brow furrowed. Should have quit while he was ahead. "Were there... others, before?" he asked awkwardly. Hopefully Sigvard's lovers from even earlier years had not met such tragic fates. "In the North. What did they do? I mean," he hesitated, chuckling helplessly at the reality of it all. "I don't know much about you. It feels like I barely even know what you like."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Relief came like waves off of the little god's body, if only for a little while, and his smile leapt like a flame to Sigvard's lips. He couldn't remember such warmth. It had been so long since either of them had simply  _ smiled _ —the fondness that came alive in the Northlander's ice-blue eyes didn't diminish, even throughout Cobra's next fretting, and he pushed his wide grin against the crease in the centre of the man's brow. A better man might have thought it pathetic how much hope and devotion was stirred up in him purely from having been asked the question. But he was not a better man, and so he reveled in it.   
  
With his godling's posture relaxed, seeming to be at least a little more secure in himself, Sig felt the drying could continue. So his hands went to the towel around Cobra's shoulders, and lifted it to clear the last of the mess from his face. "I like you," he muttered, finding his bearings in the subject. "I like to be pushed most of all; made to be stronger. You remember when you meant to teach me about your poisons?" His eyes had dropped to watch his hands work, rubbing the towel across the man's tan shoulders, over his chest, down the lengths of his arms. "And how to be mindful. I liked this in you, although your methods were..." Pale lips faltered. "Alarming. And to push, I like to push, too, and challenge you to be better. So it is that most of my lovers have been this way."

His body came close enough to wrap a loose embrace around Cobra, and he found a dry place on the towel to wash over his shoulder blades, and down his spine. "There were others, yes. There were the ones like you—I had a fixation with those I had no hope of having, I think." Perhaps he still did. "I told you I have known a kingslayer? I tried to woo her for weeks." The memory pricked at the corners of his lips, made him bite his tongue in a dry little giggle. "A great many whores, too. As many as I could afford, and then a little more. I fell for some of them." He was quick to fall, but then again that should have come as no surprise.   
  
Satisfied with his work so far, the giant man knelt. He held the towel over spread hands, and brought them to either side of Cobra's thighs—and rubbed, softly, down and down and down. "Not all of them have been so frivolous. There was a lord's daughter that I loved for her fierceness and capacity to drink. A village girl who'd braid my hair after sparring." His shoulders had hunched, as he leaned to dry Cobra's foot, and he spoke into the ground. "But her, the southern girl. Nasrim. I gave her and our boy Hadi the most years of my life."

Upright on his knees again, the towel coming to Cobra's other thigh. "There have been fewer men. Buggery is only strictly a disgrace if you're taking a cock, you understand, but there is a shame in associating with us girlish sorts that puts most men off before long. All the same, my first love was a man. He wore a wolf pelt. A berserker—you know of these men?" His gaze abandoned his work, for the first time, to look up from where he knelt in search of Cobra's gaze. "I met him not long after the circus left my village; I was a boy, still. We would fuck, and he would prepare me to go into the woods. I felt I was meant to be a berserker, like him, and to do this you must go to the wilderness until you've learned the ways of an animal." He was finished. He bundled the towel and held it in his lap, but did not rise. "I did not see him again after I went to the woods. It is because I failed, I think; weeks-starved, I gave in and went back to the village." And there had been Brunn, with his bit of bread.   
  
A deep breath allowed him to find his point again. "I like you," he repeated. "I like you a great deal."   
  


COBRA -

 

Eyes wide, wary but hopeful, Cobra watched as the man pressed his smile to his forehead. He had done something right, it seemed. Mindful not to ruin it, he kept his mouth shut, nodding as he settled back against the breadth of Sigvard’s chest to listen, more gentle now.

He had pushed the man with both hands before, and that had been the start of their latest row. He decided he must mean it in a different way, like forcing him to learn the poisons again, or perhaps simply making him train. He wouldn’t like that either, with the heat, he suspected, but he could try when the man was in better spirits and see what happened.

He would not admit it to the man, but he felt a little better at hearing that the Kingslayer he turned him down. He did not need another woman he could not compete with. The men, however... he was sure he could best them all. Yes, as much as he loathed to be compared, this was the thought that ran through his head and he clung to it. If the man liked treasures, he could be that. He’d been that most of his life.

“No wonder you used to watch me,” he scoffed quietly, a faint smile lingering on his lips. He gave the matter some more serious though, and nuzzled closer. “I like you too, Sigvard. You do not need to be an animal for me. You only need to hold me.” Lifting his head, he gave the man a chaste kiss.

“Can we leave now?” He asked. “Even if we continue talking, I would prefer if we did it in my room. Are you hungry? I can have the servants bring food.”   
  


SIGVARD -

 

"Of course." The words were hushed. Distracted. As if Sigvard had been yanked from a reverie—and in a sense he very much had been, having revisited the tenderest parts of his life while knelt on the floor. His knees ached, anyway, and so he finally rose to his feet. Where he had taken the utmost care to dry Cobra's body, he rushed with his own; he scrubbed the towel over pale flesh with near-violence, his little master's request having put an uncomfortable urgency into his body. So much like before, with the washing, with Keht. It didn't seem to be a lesson he'd learn easily.   
  
The matter of holding, though, he had long since grown accustomed to. When he was dry, dry enough, he bent to slip an arm around Cobra's waist, and the other under his naked ass; in an easy motion, he hauled him up, chest to chest, in the usual embrace. "I am not hungry, no," he murmured. He wouldn't ask the same of his godling, not so soon after watching that ancient thing feast on blood.   
  
He'd leave the heap of towels on the stone, and the garments, all soaked-through with blood and piss. The wide hall welcomed them again. The smell of jasmine. The soft brush of Sigvard's naked feet as he walked. Watching his surroundings, or at least imitating the act, he hefted the southerner's body some inches higher so that he might put his lips into the nape of his neck. It was a feeble first attempt at putting words to the thought that apparently preoccupied him: "You misunderstand me, I think." A thousand little hairs stood on end, along his arms, down his spine. "I did not want to train as a berserker for my lover's sake. I would not do it for you, although a pelt-wearer without a master is a dangerous one. This is not a thing that's done for lovers."   
  
A quick sniff of night air was meant to shore him up. His arms pulled tighter. "It was a path I had chosen for myself. I felt it was my fate. I had been convinced of it since childhood."

 

COBRA -

 

He didn't mind the carrying so much this time. It kept the man close to him, and he could hook his legs around his hips and his hands around his shoulders and feel the warmth of his flesh, the steady beat of his pulse. Humming, he let the man nuzzle into the nape of his neck, still oblivious to the reason why he felt so sated even though he didn't recall any meal. For all he knew, the men had shared a meal by the Urdai after the business with the goat, but now that he thought about it, eyes open just enough to be slits, it was wishful thinking. Still, with no trace of the taste left in his mouth, it was hard to stir up revulsion. And he had eaten raw meat before. It wasn't so terrible.   
  
"What stops you from wearing pelts, anyway?" he mused aloud, a furrow in his brow. Holding the role of a berserker in no holy regard, he didn't see their garb as any kind of exclusive thing. "In the snow, at least. In the sands, if you wore anything more than a thong you'd die from the heat, and anything less, you'd die from sun exposure." His words were getting slow, slightly groggy. As soon as they reached his bedroom he wriggled free and curled up in a familiar corner of his mattress, back to cushions. He draped a splendid turquoise and purple sheet over one shoulder in lieu of clothes, leaving his other clavicle to air. Still, he did his best to keep his eyes open, reluctant to  sleep.

"Do you feel I'm your fate, now?" he asked, a keenness cutting through the weary glazed in his eyes. "Or perhaps you wish to do both things."   
  


SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard's lumbering body went towards the bed, slower than his godling, but with the same divine purpose— _ sleep _ , sleep at last. Dull eyes watched the man arrange himself as he considered the question. Where could he start? This thing was so much more to him than words, and he was shit at those to begin with.   
  
"It isn't just the wearing of pelts," he murmured. His knees came to the edge of the mattress, and so he let himself fall into it; and just as gracefully as Cobra had laid the blanket over himself, the pale warrior was unthinking and ungainly in burrowing beneath it. "Any man can wear pelts; we make our clothes of them." He pushed his wide back to the heat of Cobra's body, and caught his wrist to pull his arm about himself. He had enjoyed the clinging. Hauling cushions to his own chest, snug underneath that pretty veil, he spoke softly. "A berserker will have one pelt, whole; all of one animal, a wolf or a bear or some such thing. He will wear its face for a hood, which the villagers do not do, and he must slaughter and skin the thing himself when he is in the woods—the pelt is then proof of his strength and of his animal spirit."   
  
The Northlander's lips found a tassel at the corner of one of his hoard of cushions, and he nibbled at it now. As if teething. "When he wears the pelt, he remembers his rite, and the battles he has done since; it's the pelt that brings him into a rage, the trance of killing, as much as it is the pain. Some will stitch the hide to their skin before fighting." Others would lash themselves, others would fight dogs, all to stir up a wild and blinding fury. "He is a match for seven men when he is like this."

A long, long breath filled his broad chest. "I know you are my fate, little thing. More than I feel it. But there is a restlessness in me that I have never understood, and it is only quiet when I am in agony or fighting." A quiet pause. "I will ask the shamans what they think of it." Another. "And if they tell me that this is my fate, would you begrudge it? When we go to my homeland, would you let me go into the woods for a time?"   
  


COBRA -

 

Even there in the safety of his bedroom, curled around the big man's back, Cobra could imagine the beastly things Sigvard described. It sent a chill through him, kept his eyes wide. "Is that what they do," he commented inanely, but the wariness in his tone gave him away. With a sharp little inhale through his nose, he recalled other sounds he had heard in the past, the flames of the memories stoked by the sounds that might accompany men who roved like beasts.   
  
"The Urdai scream," he whispered. "And they make sounds, with their tongue, I do not think I can do it." He saw the glow of fire against the red sand in the back of his mind, different from the usual vision. It was Keht being less intrusive, he guessed. Perhaps his abilities were more fine-tuned now that he had fed. He had made his hair longer, too; that hadn't escaped his notice. He didn't mind much; he'd only cut it because Hamad told him to. Court fashions. Trivial things.   
  
"Into the woods," he repeated, clamming up slightly. "I suppose... I won't truly be alone," he reasoned, thinking of Keht. Keht would protect him, especially with the amber in his possession. "I would not begrudge it, then," he murmured, reaching up to brush some of Sigvard's hair behind his ear, clearing the soft shell of his ear for a kiss. "But you must come back to me. There are things in the forests in the North. I've stared into the trees on many nights but I've never dared go in." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

These would have been Sigvard's dreams: The Urdai's strange shouting, and shadows stalking him in the dark of the woods. They were the last things his consciousness clung to, as he was spoiled with Cobra's soft words, soft fingers, soft kiss; it was with these curiosities dancing in his tired mind that he was pushed off to a gentle sleep in the way of a raft on a still lake. And the most he did to fight those inevitable terrors was to close his eyes, and to murmur for his godling to join him in resting.   
  
These would have been his dreams, if they had come for him, but it was the first night in much more than he could remember that he was left utterly alone. No such terrors. No waking to blackness to make sense of some new sound or another, to work out whether it was gulls or a battle-cry. He didn't so much as turn. He laid like a stone, clutching his cushions and nursing at the tassel like a tit until the noon sun fought through dozens of draped gauzes and washed over the pair of their bodies.   
  
There was a weight of something settling into the bed in front of him. The size of a man, he thought. But he lifted his lids by half, and only saw the empty room.

His eyes wouldn't close again. He would see the streaky daylight baking the walls, and the door just a little ajar, and the fine turquoise fabric tangled around his arm. But the rest of him seemed to still be caught up in the thick luxury of that deep and dreamless sleep; his muscles felt like iron, and each breath seemed to sink him further and further into the mattress. Tugged by something beyond it.   
  
The voice came from somewhere at their feet. It could have been miles away. "Cobra."   
  
He knew it as Eilif. Sigvard lifted his head, iron too, to see the sorcerer standing some ways from the end of the bed; only to watch the cushions again in sudden paranoia, as he was certain he had felt something restless among them. His lips parted to complain. He didn't like the lethargy, didn't like these invisible things. But the best he could manage was a grunt, a faint whimper, as he struggled to push himself up to sit.

"Give it some minutes," the shaman offered. "Your spirit is not used to this sort of sleep. But Cobra—" Pale fingers reached from beneath his cloak to touch the bed, very very gently. "Cobra, you must come with me. We must begin. We will speak to your Keht. We will commune."   
  
Damning  _ some minutes _ , the northern soldier fumbled now in an attempt to escape the covers, with marked less success than he'd wormed his way under them to begin with. His legs, his legs, there seemed to be something dysfunctional about his legs. "We spoke to Keht," he croaked. "I spoke—he came in the night."   
  
The witch's body was still, his fingertips not leaving the bed. His lips and his gaze were thin in the direction of his countryman. Steadier, now, settling on Cobra. "You are his master? He must not come along—we must have you alone. You must tell him to wait for you at the end of it."

 

COBRA -

 

He awoke as soon as his name was spoken, as though he had merely been waiting for it. The sight of the witch waiting at the foot of his bed did not put him at ease, and he sat up with a deep inhale through his nose. Immediately, the way Sigvard was slow to move only made the young man more agitated, leaning over him protectively on all fours, like some kind of animal. Perhaps he was.   
  
"If he does not walk again, I will make you the same," he found the words coming out of his mouth as easily as breathing. Adrenaline kicked into his bloodstream, waking him up to full alertness with ease. He tipped his head to one side as he regarded the stranger, finding it hard to suppress a sneer when he spoke of communing.  _ Communing _ . As if he had any idea what he was dealing with. As the feeling of sincere insult flooded through him, he realised that perhaps all of the emotions were not entirely his own. Keht would be awake, then. The god seemed to stake a very specific claim in his dignity when it came to these strange shamen.

"We are connected," Cobra said broodily, placing his weight on the man's chest as he carefully climbed over his body and slunk to his feet. "I will come back to Sigvard or I will taste blood. And I am never truly alone, you know," he pointed out the technicality as he reluctantly stepped forward. "So what is it that you would have use do? Would you ask me to let Keht take over? Or is there more to it than just that?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

There was a moment under the cage of Cobra's body, feeling the warmth and weight of his touch, that Sigvard was sincerely tempted to haul him back down among the cushions and hide under the sheets until Eilif got the idea to come back later on. His arms had the sense to stay still, at least. But his blue eyes followed his little god-king from the bed to the floor, marvelling with quiet curiosity, drawing up the proud line of his posture. There had been a strangeness about the southerner. Ever since the feeding in the night, there had been a tenderness, and a strength; and now he couldn't quite remember if any of these things had been there in him before all these weeks and weeks of Cobra starving and brutalizing himself and resigning to misery.   
  
It was here now, at any rate, and Sigvard wanted to bask in it more than anything. To hear more about where the man was feeble, to understand him. And to be understood. To be called back from the woods.   
  
Well, there was nothing doing now. Alone in the bed, the Northlander sat straight, and dragged his feet close to pinch life into his toes; he would be able to walk, he thought, in a few seconds more. Enough to get to the cabinet and have a little of that heartsbane. For the time being, he watched the shaman, who in turn seemed to see noone but Cobra. There was a sort of smile in his eyes as he spoke. "Your man Sigvard will recover soon enough," he murmured, linking his hands in front of himself. "And you will be back to him before long. You can trust us in this; we came to serve you." His parted lips left some words to silence, then, before carrying on. "You and I should speak first, I think. We should understand one another before you allow Keht to come. And there are some preparations—I'll explain it all."

The witch wouldn't give another glance to the bed before strolling to the cracked door, but Sigvard wouldn't protest regardless; he preoccupied himself with suckling on his tongue and pulling a cushion to fill his empty arms. "I will be close," he muttered, in the direction of the slave. His hand went to his scar, tracing mindlessly among the numb and silky skin.   
  
  
The great pale thing would only last ten or so minutes in the dim quarters before deciding solitude was utterly unbearable. He had rooted out the heartsbane by smell, and taken enough drops that he couldn't quite manage to stop closing and opening his fists; this complicated dressing immensely, and so he quit the whole ordeal as soon as he'd managed to tug on some of those gauzy, loose pants that he had immediately found very practical.   
  
It was like this that he left the room, and from there his inclination was to follow fresh air. Away from the baths. Away from the perfumed gardens. He was walking the gleaming city walls before long, the colour of the desert and warming the soles of his feet after a morning's worth of hot sun. They had woken late. And all of it dreamless—though he did wonder, as he caught sight of the distant Urdai tents below, if Keht had made any attempt to defy the shamans' vigil in the night. He felt he might have, himself, if he was an ancient god. If only to see that he could.

Here; it had become easier and easier, in these last weeks, to work out which man was and wasn't Irfan by only the sight of his back. It was only after three tries that he had found the right one. The first two, kindly, had helped in pointing him in the right direction.   
  
The brush of Sigvard's feet on stone gave him away early, though his reach was long enough to clap his wide and heavy palm against the guard's shoulder in the usual Northern familiarity. "Irfan," he barked, only marginally less sure of himself on this latest attempt. "They have begun." Disjointed. He was having some trouble hiding his purpose. "I'm to stay away. They tell me—your sergeant, he says you have stood through the night?" Squinting into the sun was an excuse for the way his breath never seemed to leave his lungs. "Come; you'll be relieved. We'll go and have a drink."

 

COBRA -

 

Something still kept him ill at ease. Not Keht, he could barely feel him trying to take control, no; something of his own mind didn't like the situation. It ebbed away, only partially, when Sigvard began to sit up and move, not quite as poisoned or drugged as he had first dreaded. Grumbling, he got to his feet, padding over the the overflowing wardrobe and wriggled into a saffron-yellow coverall.    
  
"You barely know me," he accused, fixing the witch with a wary eye even as he followed after him. "Do not claim to serve me. You care more about the god I house, I can tell. I don't blame you for that, but you'd do best not to try to deceive me." With one last, longing look at Sigvard, he slipped out the door and followed the strange man down the hall. 

 

IRFAN -

 

Irfan didn't startle when the heavy hand fell on his shoulder; he had heard the footfalls from a mile away. Nevertheless, he was slow to turn, staring out into  the desert and the patchwork of tents that made up the Urdai encampment in a stupor. His breath reeked of coffee, and he sucked the remaining dregs of chewed-up coffee beans out of his teeth with his tongue, They gave them to the guards to help them stay up during the night shift.    
  
"Sigvard," he greeted the man with a slightly guarded expression, a furrow in his thick brows. It weighed heavily on his mind, but not for long. Even as he trudged alongside the man, he let the words come. "I suppose he told you," he glowered, still carrying a tension in his shoulders. He kept his eyes on the ground for a moment longer before he mustered up the will to look him in the eye, full of defiance against some imagined prejudice. "Will you think less of me now? Do you think me a murderer?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Relief settled into Sigvard's bones. With a body beside him, everything seemed to be easier; breathing, walking, crushing the last shivers of that heartsbane. They would go to the kitchens off the great hall, he thought. There would be wine in the cellar there, and other things if he was meant to be sober—he supposed, with a crinkling of his nose, he was meant to be sober—and morsels to fatten him up. And they would be close.   
  
The guard's voice barely registered. Sig watched the side of his face as if to hear him better, and when those silly questions came along, Irfan would have seen his whole expression sour with a rotten kind of confusion.   
  
_ Murderer. _ He shook his head. The wrinkles in his brow and his eyes smoothed out in a kind of understanding, but he seemed to still gnaw at the inside of his lip for some time between speaking. A low hum caught in his throat. "This thing you did was not murder." A great, pale arm lifted in front of himself to wave, dismissive, as if tossing the whole idea. "I have done murder and I have done killing; these things are not the same." His feet found stone steps down, down along the wall to the courtyards and corridors. "You are not a murderer. You were a dog made to fight." His eyes turned from the man, squinting at the sun again. "You only had the choice of living or dying, I think."

It was strange, now, to walk along the foot of the wall, feeling dwarfed by this thing separating the city from the desert. "It is good you lived, Irfan," he nodded. A flash of white teeth, his tongue pinched between them. He eyed the other man, and stepped close to gently collide with his body. "I am glad to have known you." Both hands patting at his own belly, now. Breakfast would maybe keep his mind off the whole affair with Keht.   
  
He sucked at his teeth and summoned saliva. "I only think less of these rich Navanese shits." Spitting a gob at the wall, now, as if it was at the feet of their imagined fine robes. "But they have met justice, hm? And do you feel properly avenged—safe from them now?"

 

IRFAN -

 

He still flinched at the words. The thing he did. Even after all these year, he could still feel the memory of it in his hands. he could still see the colours. People might wonder why he kept the job of a guard, where he might be asked to shed more blood, relive his trauma. In actuality, it was worlds away from what his life had been. Mostly patrols, standing still at doors with a spear that never saw blood. Staring out into the desert at the night.    
  
The Urdai's undulating had unsettled him.   
  
"...Thank you," he responded finally, voice somewhat distant. The screams. He didn't feel much like eating at all but he knew he had to. He was no stranger to routine. And who knew, perhaps the smell of food would put the dismal memories at the back of his mind where they belonged. In time, anyway. "They died," he explained quietly, looking around as though he expected the walls to have ears. "Hamad let them all die. No one started a new brothel after. The nobles that replaced them didn't know it existed. They're weaker now, more wealthy, perhaps, but decades of secrets and blackmail were slaughtered on that day. Perhaps... perhaps even people who would know why Hamad would send you to the Capital."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard watched the guard, minding the way his gaze went this way and that; he didn't follow it, but he did lower his voice, at least, to respect this sudden secrecy. He nodded. "I have heard how they died, yes," he murmured. The night had been long enough to put the images out of his mind, and now, summoning up the memory of Cobra's words, they were vague and distant and harmless. It was some surprise to hear that the vile practice hadn't been renewed, though. It was a very rare thing to so swiftly cut an infection out at the root.   
  
The remark about Hamad and the Capital wrote another question into his face. What was this, now? More secrets? Weren't these southerners capable of doing anything  _ straightforward _ ?   
  
His fair hand was gentle in coming to Irfan's arm, tugging him into a little alcove where the only danger was their echoing voices. Still, he tried for subtlety. "What is there to know...?" Of course the man wouldn't have the answer, but he seemed, at least, to know that not everything was as it seemed. "He has told me. He wants power, and I am  _ nadameer _ . I understand this. There are men like Hamad in my country. Do you think there is more to it?" Of course there was the Duke's secret arrangement, the claim he had over Cobra even with the brand struck. He chewed at the question. Was that something in this? "Will you tell me what he's told you?"

 

IRFAN -

 

A dull and hollow laugh sounded in his throat. He had no more energy to give on this matter, not after a night of watching the wall with the accompaniment of those harrowing sounds. He waited until they had reached the canteen, populated almost exclusively by other guards in uniform and the occasional servant before he answered, grabbing an apple from a fruit bowl by the wall. "You still think I have some arrangement with Hamad beyond being his guard," he accused the man in a tired yet bitter voice. "We fuck occasionally, but so what? He fucks everyone, ask them." He waved the hand gripping the apple in the direction of the other guards on break. A few nodded or shrugged in response, but most were tired, having finished the night shift themselves.   
  
Irfan bit into the apple loudly, swallowing with relish as he continued towards the counters where food and drinks were laid out. One benefit of Hamad's obscene wealth was that the guards ate almost as well as Cobra did, although judging by the spread, protein was the main focus of their diet. "I do my job, that is all. I know even less than Cobra does when it comes to what Hamad is thinking. He is a dangerous man, I know that much. He told me to guard Cobra and you. If it comes to it, Cobra's life is to be saved instead of yours. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

"No," Sigvard shook his head, voice withering in helpless confusion. "I knew all this, Irfan, I understand it." For all his dreaming about the mountains and the mud and the woods, he didn't have full confidence in his ability to survive a kingslaying. Cobra would live. Even without Hamad and Irfan and all that, he was sure that Cobra would live, if only under Keht's protection.   
  
The Northlander was watching the other men with some anxiety; he didn't have the space to  _ look _ at the food, much less take some for himself. He hadn't wanted to talk here. The alcove had been safe, private. He didn't know how to say things in this place, surrounded by all these listening ears.   
  
"I do not think you have a secret arrangement with him," he whispered. Loyalty, maybe, but nothing so insidious. "Please, Irfan." Curling his shoulders, leaning close, supplicating himself. Hadn't he just assured him that he was not against him? "You said that the dead men might know why he sends me to do this thing. I only want to know what makes you say this. Hamad—he has made his intentions clear to me, he has explained why." It had been so simple until minutes ago. Hamad was successor.  _ Usurper. _ Killing the king would deliver him power; what other reason did there need to be...? "What makes you think these men knew something that Hamad has not said?"

 

IRFAN -

 

Using a wooden spoon to ladle a hearty, red-tinged stew into a bowl, Irfan cast a queer look at Sigvard, noting how uncomfortable the slab of a man seemed. He himself felt no worry at speaking freely in the guards' company; all of them were former whores, or  _ nadameer _ themselves; a beggar or two here or there. Hamad had seen to that; the sons of nobles had been shipped off to the Capital to hold military ranks there. The Navanese palace was staffed by underdogs and those whose witness would hold poorly in court.    
  
"You don't know about Hamad," he realised aloud suddenly, back straightening as he turned to look at the blond with a bemused grin. "He didn't become Duke of this town through birth, he came into the position through  _ money _ . For all intents and purposes, Hamad was  _ nadameer _ , too. Of course, how can a man be the lord of a town and swear no fealty? His status was overlooked once he was given his title, and now he answers to the King. The ones left who know are all too low born to do anything about it."   
  
There were eyes on them, not accusatory, but knowing. Murmurs of agreement rumbled throughout the room. "And so we do nothing," Irfan carried on, taking a seat at a bench. "And the people do not complain, for even if you must take food that has been thrown away, it is impossible to starve in Navan. We have too much to complain."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The gentle clamour about the room put the Northlander's hair on end. He felt so terribly out of place.  _ Foreign _ . Unhelped by all these strangers listening in, all these strangers and their sagely murmurs about what they knew and he didn't. He didn't belong here. It wasn't anything like in his country; get any number of northern soldiers in a dining hall, and a new visitor would be welcomed with a roar and a beer and a slap on the back. He didn't know these men, he didn't trust them. They had only been not-Irfan on the wall.   
  
He opened his mouth and closed it again. Was that an answer to his question? In a roundabout way, maybe—the implication that if there were any high-born men left who knew Hamad's history, they might  _ do _ something, and therefore might know something secret about Hamad's intentions in the Capital...? It was strained. It would have to do. He wouldn't ask for a third time. Maybe he would simply ask Hamad, when he saw him next, if there was any ulterior motive besides the obvious.   
  
"Fine," he said, rigid where he stood. Nodding. "Fine, fine." Heredity only accounted for a fraction of the kings up north, anyway; though it was war and feats rather than  _ money _ that brought those other men to power. "I understand." He certainly understood  _ something _ , even if it wasn't what he'd been after. His jaw tightened and released, and he moved his gaze to meet the eyes he felt must have been on his naked back. "Will you be staying here?" All these strangers. He didn't know how to speak in front of them. "I should be closer, I think. To Cobra, to the shamans."

 

IRFAN -

 

"Let me eat," came the gruff answer, the thick-bodied guard already attacking his bowl of curry with all the ferocity of a wolf. Now that the apple had broken the seal on his night-time fast, he could hardly eat fast enough and cleared the bowl in record time. Gesturing briefly to another man at the table, he caught a bread roll that was genially lobbed in his direction and tore it apart in his hands, using it to mop up the spiced sauce remaining in the bowl.   
  
"They're whores, you know," he pointed out, still noting how uncomfortable the man was. Briefly making eye contact with a man who used to juggle swords on the streets, he clarified, "Most of them. These men are like me; tired and hungry. You don't need to be afraid; we won't eat you, no matter how pink you may be." He sniggered, some of his humour returning now that his appetite was somewhat satisfied.    
  
"You can go if you want," he warned the other man casually. "But those witches unsettle us even more than the sand-walkers. You should stay away if you've been told to stay away. I would hate to see that little one in my nightmares. His face is too young for his eyes."

 

SIGVARD -

 

“I’m not afraid,” Sigvard huffed. Although if he had been, he didn’t expect the man’s twisted joke to be much of a comfort. The problem was exactly as Irfan said—all these men were  _ like him _ , and the Northlander was the other. He couldn’t be candid or comfortable here, not when it was made more and more clear to him how much he didn’t belong. “I only meant to speak to you privately.” His eyes went to the counters where the foodstuffs were arranged, and he pushed out another breath. ”I know you understand this, Irfan—“ He made his way to the spread, plucking up a napkin and folding it so that he could stuff it full with an orange, a potato, goat meat, and so on. “You were wary of the damned walls as we came here, and now you mock me for being wary of strangers.”   
  
He’d been ambitious with the portioning of his breakfast. He was scarcely able to tie the napkin closed, and now cradled the precarious bundle in the crook of his elbow. “I’m going to eat in the large hall.” It was still far too early for the fat nobles to get it into their heads to congregate there for a feast, he felt; it would be empty. Empty, and a welcome distraction, and most of all closer than this to the guests’ quarters. Close enough to hear the drums. “I would like it if you joined me with your bread and whatever else—I would like to be with you alone.”

 

IRFAN -

 

"That was different," Irfan frowned, although his body language was already relenting as it was easier to see Sigvard's point with a full belly. Still, he felt it important to explain. "The Urdai were screaming. Or something close to it. It sounded like spirits might sound, if they had voices at all." He grit his teeth with the difficulty of putting the right words to it. He lacked the poetic skill to do the description justice, he felt.   
  
"Fine," he agree, standing up and collecting his bowl. He filled it with yet more stew and stuck another loaf of bread on top, grabbing a pear from the fruit bowl on their way out for good measure. Sigvard was right; the great hall was deserted. Very deserted, in fact; Hamad had not hosted a meal there since the last one Cobra had attended, and the remaining nobles were too meek-mannered to impose themselves, so they did not come without invitation.

"I'm sorry," Irfan shrugged as he took a seat along one of the long sides of the table, not daring to take the head of it even in the Duke's absence. "I am used to speaking so casually around them. There are things we have shared that remove the boundaries between people. It's like it doesn't matter at all with them. I know you don't have that. Perhaps you do with Cobra."

 

SIGVARD -

 

A flash of indecision crossed Sigvard’s face, considering the seats. He certainly wasn’t above claiming the head of the table, as he was in the habit of taking his fun where he could get it; but as there was little else  _ fun _ about the morning, he just as soon relented and and sat heavy across from the guard. He let the napkin fall open, then, and carefully arranged his meal.   
  
With a mouthful of potato, he grunted, nodding and waving away the apology. He was still chewing as he spoke. “It’s good you have them.” He hadn’t forgotten how the man had looked like a beaten dog when he’d asked Sig if he thought less of him. A history like Irfan’s was like a poison; it was a relief that he could at least find strength in camaraderie. “It’s good you are not alone in this place.”   
  
The name of his little master, though, brought a long and complicated sigh from his large body. It was another two bites before he shook his head. “It isn’t so easy with Cobra.” His blue eyes lifted to catch Irfan’s, as if the remark was enough to express his thinking. Of course it wasn’t; he hardly knew his thinking himself. “He cares for me, I know this. But he is bitter and vengeful at times. And I am impatient, and I think I expect too much from him too early. This last month—it has made it hard for me to be free with him, like you are free with your men. I have felt utterly alone.”   
  
Now came the task of peeling the orange with his blunted fingernails. ”Did you know he went to Urd in the night? I was too free with him, I drove him off, and we went to the camp. There was... Keht, there was an encounter. I’m sure this is the reason for the screaming you spoke of, in some way.”

Nails wouldn’t do it. The orange was going to mush. He used his teeth instead, wincing at the taste of bitter oils. “It was...” He grunted, looking for the word in the common tongue. “It made things clear. We understand each other better, but I am still a little afraid of him, I think. He is a force.” Juice dribbled down his thick fingers as he tore the fruit apart, and his mouth chased the mess. “You were right about the fucking,” he murmured, suckling at the heel of his palm. “I know we would be closer if I had not put a stop to it.”

 

IRFAN -

 

"No one is ever truly alone in a place like this," Irfan scoffed, but he he knew what the blond man meant. That much was evident in his sigh as he leaned against the table with one elbow,  pushing his bowl half a foot away now that his pace of eating had slowed to simply picking at the crust of his bread. His stomach was beginning to catch up to his initially ravenous appetite. "I am sorry you felt this way," he sighed, expression softening. "I did not know it was quite so bad between you and Cobra. If you'll forgive me, you struck me as the type of man who enjoyed harsh treatment from his lovers, so I assumed all was well."    
  
The news about the Urdai, however, concerned him even more, carving a deep furrow into his brow as he remembered the sounds. "It must have been bad for him as well," he mused, poking his finger into his bread. "Cobra had to be at great unrest to ever seek the mere distraction of Hamad's company. I am assuming it was the same this time. Unless that... thing, caused him to stray there." He couldn't be sure. He felt like he knew less and less about their unfortunate circumstances every day.   
  
Despite everything, he snorted. "I am always right," he teased, dark eyes twinkling, in part due to his own joke and the way the Northlander was savaging the orange into a messy pulp. Sniggering, he pulled a dagger from his belt and slid it across the table, handle first, perhaps too late now that the damage was already done.  "It's not so hard to fix that," he pointed out with a tilt of his head. "There must be a dozen different kinds of aphrodisiacs in his room."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The guard's impish observations brought a broad smile to Sigvard's lips, and soon enough boisterous laughter bubbled out of him and filled the great and empty hall. He was giddy. A rare thing, these days; it was a relief, and delightful, and he was unafraid of sharing his thrill with his southern friend.   
  
"It will correct itself soon enough, I'm sure," he said, making some attempt at seriousness in spite of the glow in his face. With a nod, he accepted the dagger to at least carve the mess into more manageable pieces. "We have come to some understanding. I'm more hopeful. I will be more patient with him. The rest will follow, I think."   
  
It couldn't be helped. Whatever façade of gravity he'd managed to keep up now fell away with gurgling laughter burrowing up from his chest. "You are right," he parroted faintly. Maybe there was some truth to  _ always _ . "I do enjoy harshness." It might as well have been bred into him by the pelt-wearer, and even his southern wife had an edge to her in daylight.

 

The Northlander shuffled closer to the table, lifting his heavy arms and letting them fall with a crack as if to punctuate his thought. He had forgotten eating. He watched Irfan's face with a roguish thrill. "I go for  _ fire _ . You understand? Cobra can be a wicked little thing; vicious, fierce. There are times when he is convinced of his power rather than doubtful of it. When he is like this..." He shook his head, as if he didn't have the words to describe paradise. "He called me a mutt, once." The corners of his lips tugged wider, and a gravelly noise sounded in his throat to complete the image. "He's had me since then."   
  
The enchantment faded some; he eyed the mess of pulp in his hand. "But these weeks have been cold. He has been disdainful, quiet, repulsed by me. I understand it—he is suffering, and I have not found the way to be helpful. But this sort of harshness is poison. Like gangrene; it rots. It's not fire."   
  
At last, he shoveled the last bit of fruit into his mouth, and jutted his chin to Irfan; a puzzle in his brow. "But you?" He leaned across to present the dagger. "You do not have a lover here?"

 

IRFAN -

 

“Well, if this witchcraft does what it's supposed to do, the spirit and Cobra won't be so much at odds with each other, won;t they?" He tried to sound reassuring, but there was a flicker of doubt on Irfan's expression. Truth be told, he still had trouble accepting all this talk of spirits and witches and gods. He still recalled, as clear as a bell, the chill he felt upon realising that Cobra's mind had not been his own, that day in the baths. It raised questions, of course. So many, the kind that haunted him in his dreams. Would a spirit come for his mind someday? Would there be unseen forces to answer to once he died? Should he be worshipping flames, or something else entirely?   
  
It was better not to think about.   
  
He forced a nod, his grin bright from teeth but empty in his eyes. "That sounds like Cobra. He's always had a fire in him. I've seen fire like that get a lot of men killed. Luckily for him, there are so many powerful men who wish to possess that fire when it's behind such pretty eyes. Your winterland eyes are popular in these lands, you know. And I mean that as a warning; if you survive this thing you do in the Capital, Hamad will not want to let him go."

The question, however uncomfortable, was a welcome distraction from worse things to ponder. He let the heavy sigh swell his chest. "Who would want me as a lover?" he chuckled. "A guard under Hamad's thumb, and a former whore, no less. The others and I are close, yes, but it is a small pond to fish in, and none of them have ever taken my heart, even if they've taken my cock." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard listened with idle patience, clearing the mess of fruit from his lips with the back of his hand before moving on to tuck into the bits of meat he'd brought from the canteen. His  _ prized _ northern eyes kept steady on Irfan's face all the while. He followed what he was saying, he supposed, but he didn't independently understand why any of these things should rule out his desirability. In his country, there were ample men who fell for whores, particularly the  _ former _ ones; and even lowly thralls had their little trysts, although they must have understood that any affair could only end in tragedy.   
  
"I would want you," he said gruffly, through a mangled bite of goat's meat. "You fight and you fuck well, and you say these things that make me laugh." As if drawing up the memory of some old joke, he smiled brightly now, chewing. "And there is a sweetness about you that is worth protecting." Sea air washed from the terrace into the great hall, nudging past columns and drapes; his shoulders lifted in a deep and indulgent breath. "Would you like to be lovers?" Why not, really...? Cobra was close enough with Irfan, and had practically blessed the two men's fucking; and Sig, for his part, had learned his lesson in jealousy. Severely. "Would that suit you?"

 

IRFAN -

 

The man raised his thick eyebrows, a quiet huff of laughter pushing out of him more like a breath. “I know you  _ want _ me,” he quipped with a lopsided smile. “That much was clear when we fucked. And on the wall.” Even now, his eyes drifted to the window. It seemed his appetite had finally stalled, and he put the remaining husk of his bread inside the stew-smeared bowl and pushed it aside.

“The fucking is something we do,” he said frankly, leaning over the table on one elbow. “I don’t think being lovers is an option, though. Trust, yes, but that crazy feeling? The forces that make a man do wild and stupid things for the sake of a lover? I think Cobra might kill you if you felt that for another.”

He didn’t just think, actually, he knew it with a stout confidence. He’d seen the slave’s fragility, at the core of him. The thick exterior could be misleading, so the blond could not be blamed for failing to realise just how deeply he was connected with his little lord, like it or not. “Do not pity me,” he smiled. “My life is far better than it used to be, lover or not. And I am not an old man yet. Cobra is older, though he doesn’t look it.”

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard watched Irfan's smile, and matched it, apparently empty of pity or sourness. He nodded. He couldn't quite decide if he was more nuanced in this than his southern companions, or not nuanced at all: There was no competition or conflict at all in his mind between the two, Cobra and Irfan, as he'd already delivered his life to the former; he'd put the slave above any other man, and it would be like this in love, too. But he wouldn't argue the point. He was beginning to understand his godling's vulnerability in this way, although it was a new idea, starting the night before with his careful confession about being compared to a love that was years dead and gone.   
  
"I understand." Still grinning, all pleasantness, he gathered up the napkin and wiped the mess from his hands and face. "I will be wild and stupid regardless, I think," he chuckled. "This thing can't be helped."   
  
And then it came. A distant and shrill sound, echoes of it crowding and crashing down stone corridors until it filled the great hall. A half-dozen frame drums beaten without rhythm produced nothing like music; only noise, whining, the ugly sound of a rasp going down metal.   
  
Sigvard startled, and his eyes went to the door, as if there was anything at all to see. But his eyes just as soon returned to his guard-friend, his arms still heavy on the table, his face relaxed in his best impression of reassurance and knowledge in these matters. Maybe even believable.   
  
"This is the beginning," he explained. "There are drums, always, at the beginning—it does something to the minds of the shamans, so that they may talk with their spirits and things." He grimaced. "It does something to the minds of men, too, if they are too close." He fidgeted, as if deciding whether or not here was exactly far enough. "Does it frighten you...? You said, before, your folk is unsettled by them."   
  


IRFAN -

 

Irfan's cheek slipped out of his hand when the drums startled, startled and suddenly feeling greatly ill at ease by the ungodly sound. And yet godly it was, he supposed, and such a thought was deeply uncomfortable for a man whose people had turned away from their gods generations ago. Colonisers, settlers, explorers, the Navanese were, but not acolytes or zealots. They tread around the fire worshippers in the Capital with careful diplomacy but the truth was that they feared them just as they feared the raw and primal shrieking of the desert folk and so too these drums.    
  
"They are like animals," he grimaced, the appraisal coming forth before he could spare a thought for Sigvard's national pride. He wouldn't take it back, no matter how offensive. He felt it to be true. "I don't like it, Sigvard. Your people are the same as the desert folk, with your sounds." 

 

EILIF -

 

_ "You care more about the god than the house, I can tell." _   
  
Eilif stood in the hall, hazel eyes going to the pale warrior fidgeting among the cushions, and the wooden door with the snake, and finally to the southern man who joined him. Only he didn't fully join him, did he? There was something about him; something left behind in that room with that great beast of a man, and maybe it would eventually come along, and maybe it wouldn't.   
  
Now alone together in the corridor, he smiled thinly at the charges leveled against him. It certainly wasn't the first time he'd been accused of a sort of frigidness towards the living subject. In times like these, his mind went to Valdis' lessons about how the sense of propriety among the village folk had been long estranged from that among the cloistered shamans, and how it was a perversion for either one of them to try and emulate the other. Still. There was a kind of sourness about being reminded. He shifted his weight in a movement of self-consciousness that was helpfully hidden by the sway of his cloak.   
  
"You and I should speak before we begin, Cobra," he repeated softly, pushing off his heel in the direction of the grand room where he and the others had spent the night. It would all be arranged by now. All the things brought up from the boat, and some borrowed from the Duke, whom he'd met earlier that morning. "Before Keht comes. We should come to an understanding."

What a funny place to be talking of gods and houses, too, he thought. A pretty palace; certainly much grander than anything he'd ever seen, as the fortresses and the lodges in the North were built to stand sturdy against the heavy sag of snow and to curl tightly around a flame. There were gardens here, and even the people were decorated with colours he'd only seen in gemstones. Hamad must have cherished the estate a great deal. And still, if his kitchens ever came to be infested with rats, wouldn't he become very preoccupied with the vermin?   
  
His back went a little straighter. "Your Duke pays us a great deal to have you free of this thing." It took some strain to avoid the word  _ master _ . A meagre attempt at tact that Valdis would have called a perversion. "But I wonder what freedom means to you."   
  
He tugged his eyes away from the intricate tile and the sleeping jasmine and the statuesque guards around them, to instead watch the man who kept pace with him. "Would you only sleep well if your mind was completely your own again? Or would you be most fulfilled if you coexisted with your Keht in proper balance? With no need for this—" He gestured to his own throat, glancing at the other's. "This violence."

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra had been alone with countless men in his life. Strangers, traitors, all manner of those who would wish him harm. He'd be lying if he said he'd never felt afraid before. He'd been afraid before countless times. Yet with this strange witch man, this Eilif, his apprehension was something new entirely. There was an otherworldly quality to him that he'd never encountered before, and so it sent him on edge. Most men simply wanted to find out a way to fuck him or make money out of him or both. Eilif seemed to give off the air of a man who would inhale the vapour of his very soul, given half the chance. He grit his teeth, guard up.    
  
"An understanding," he parroted with a scoff. "You really have been speaking with Hamad." Knowing Hamad, he didn't like the sound of that, either. "I'll be he does," he theorised grimly. "He wants me weak again.  _ Pliable _ . He is afraid of Keht, yet once he has me by myself again, I doubt his interest will remain fresh for long. I'll be kept caged and ignored." His fists were clenched hard enough to create angry, red half-moons in his palms. Hissing slightly, he flexed his fingers open then rubbed at the skin.

The question didn't help his temperament much, the furrow deepening in his brow. "I don't know," he admitted, pace quickening. "I need it, I think. For some business we have planned, at least. In the Capital, and in the North. An ordinary man cannot achieve these things we want to do. Yet I don't understand what this 'coexisting' means, or why even my own people choke me." His finger tips traced the choker of bruises at his neck. "I don't... feel threatened, by this Keht, by his presence in my mind." He paused with the thought, meeting Eilif's eye. "It is only other men who seem threatened by him. That makes me think that Keht is something worth hanging on to."

 

EILIF -

 

This was a rare thing, the way Cobra spoke of the usefulness of his Keht, and the flash of curiosity in Eilif's eyes did nothing to hide the fact. Among the troubled people—people like this man, people who seemed to be violently at odds with the spirits who were bonded to them—among that class of people, there were of course those who used this volatile imbalance between the tangible and intangible as a weapon. These desperate folk, driven to the edge of sanity, would use it for revenge, or their best impression of it. For violence; for killing, for suicide. But Cobra wasn't speaking of a weapon. A  _ tool _ , more like. Something to keep at hand, as a shield, as a threat, or something to uplift him beyond ordinary. The witch was plainly fascinated. When they came to the door and his pale hand slipped from his robe to take the handle, he lingered.   
  
"It is our understanding," he said, "that for every man, every river, every desert, there is a spirit to match it. A counterpart, you see? Two halves of a whole. These things, the man and the spirit, can be ignorant of each other, or the death of one another, or they might know each other and coexist in harmony, and become powerful in this way. This is what I mean." He put his shoulder to the door, but did not yet open it. "But your people, the Urdai, they may understand things very differently. I don't know; I haven't communed with them." He held his tongue, here, rather than admit how keen he was on the idea. There was no point in discussing it. He could visit Urd in the night, perhaps, after all this was done. "I will ask him. Keht. Where this tradition of choking came from, and other things. Would that help you? I will tell you what he says of it. And if there is anything else you would have me ask him, you must tell me now."   
  
At last, with a heave of his body, he pushed the wide and groaning door aside.

The guests had rearranged the grand chamber beyond the point of recognition, and so anyone familiar with its usual organization would smell the sweet incense and hear the gentle clamour of the women's voices before fully understanding the way the stage was now set. Likely the most eye-catching addition was a great mirror leaning by the hearth, as tall as a man and again by a half, and framed in crudely forged metal that was studded—like Valdis' rod—with all manner of gemstones. The reflection was dull, of course, and etched, and warped; but it was faithful enough for a man to recognize himself, and that was all that was needed of it. Before it sat three little puddles of fabric. Cobra would recognize them as those he'd selected: A coverall, a costume, and of course, a bolt to cover the hair.   
  
Other than these things, the floor was mostly cleared; the dining-table had been shoved to a corner, and the bedding lined the walls, with a half-dozen girls slumbering among the cushions there. These would have been the apprentices who had been up in the night keeping vigil, and Valdis was among them. Eilif's eyes went to her, and saw the peace on her sleeping face, and he took a bracing breath.   
  
The rest of the women, the source of that soft chatter, were sat on the floor in a wide ring, the mirror at the head of it; they held their frame drums in their laps, and their fair fingers tapped in idle boredom to make a sort of rain. Outside of a spare glance, they didn't seem to mind the men's arrival.

"You said you're able to let him come?" The shaman had taken a step to the wall, to shrug out of his heavy cloak, and drop the belt and pouch that had cinched a long tunic beneath, and to take up the rod that Valdis had left for him. "You are powerful, then, both of you. But I must ask you to wait, Cobra, and try to stay with me a little while longer." With the rod in hand, he entered the apprentices' circle, and indicated that the man ought to follow. "Come; before anything, you must pick your clothes." Standing now so that the garments were at his feet, he inspected them. "You must look at these things, and consider them carefully, and pick the one that you are drawn to. It must be you who makes this choice; Keht must not have a hand in it."

 

COBRA -

 

"But we are not two halves of a whole," Cobra frowned. "We are two wholes trapped in just one. Or a whole and a half, perhaps. But the whole is mine, and I have spirit of my own, I think. How else would I walk and talk and think if I didn't?" At least, that was how he understood it. It was clear enough by now that the two peoples had different ways of doing things, or how they saw that which was unseen.    
  
"Ask, then," he agreed quickly. "But do not be surprised if it does not know. I see... glimmers, brief visions from time to time, and they are fast and confused. Obsessive, perhaps, with the drowning." Even as he spoke of it he could see the water's surface in his mind's eye. "But still incomplete." He thought for a moment if there really was anything else he would have the witch ask him. Yet the sort of things he wanted to know from Keht, of godhood, of how he came into being, of how a man like him could ascend... these were not things he wished Eilif to be privy to. "No. There is nothing else to ask," he lied, slinking through the doorway. "Just the choking."

He'd grown untrusting. He could not be blamed for this, he thought, for the way each footstep into that strange, strange scene was slow and calculated. The mirror loomed, the quiet chatter of the women held and air of foreboding and yes, even this man, whose body was pale but much smaller than SIgvard's, whose limbs were thing enough to twist and pull and whose skin was frail enough to tear with his teeth, he imagined... yes, even Eilif unsettled the man. There was no comfort here. Well, perhaps one.    
  
"Of course this is mine," he bent and picked up the coverall without a moment's hesitation. He was wearing another just like it, after all. Bunching up the soft fabric in his hands, he brought it briefly to his cheek and sighed. "I don't understand what I am supposed to do," he groused quietly, the growing sensation of being watched creeping into his mind. "What do you want me to do?"

 

EILIF -

 

All those eyes watching. Eilif kept his voice hushed to match the other's, although he knew by now that Valdis would be awake. He emptied his mind of what she would have to say of this later on. Lessons, lessons.   
  
"You must dress in this," he murmured, lifting a hand to touch the coverall. "It has been blessed in the night; anointed. You may wear it over your clothes now, or instead of them." With a half bend at the waist, he spooled the remaining garments on the floor, the unchosen, at the end of the jeweled rod—a quick thrust sent them into the smouldering hearth. "The clothing, the mirror, they are meant to give you dominion over your body, Cobra." Watching the stone tile, he seemed to measure his steps until the three were in alignment: The mirror, and then Cobra, and at last himself. "They are meant to help you see, and to help you put an end to this talking when you like. To make Keht quiet within you again." It didn't need saying that perhaps this was an empty promise; perhaps the spirit was much too powerful for only a night's-long prayer, and the child would be helpless regardless.

Here, the witch plucked up the hem of his tunic so that he could come to kneel on the hard floor. "You will sit like this—you will face the mirror. You will hear the word  _ falt _ from me, and when you do, you are free to look at what you like through the mirror—yourself, or me, or the women—but you must not look at us directly, you must not look at any living thing directly, until you hear the word again. You understand? Only through the mirror, until you hear  _ falt _ again."   
  
He held the rod across his lap, and in the muddy image of the mirror, his hazel eyes found Cobra's. "There will be drums and singing. They are meant to bring Keht, and to put me in tune with the spirits here; of the land, and the people, and my own." A pause; he considered something. "Yours too, if it is true that you are two trapped in one." Knuckles went white around the rod. His back was rigid. "The sound will be maddening, and in madness, Keht will come; until then, I would like you to fight him. To show him your strength. To keep dominion."   
  
A long, deep breath through his nose filled his chest and emptied it. " _ Falt _ , Cobra." Another inhale, exhale. "Breathe like this." And then the rhythm of his lungs went to something wilder. "Deeper, Cobra. Much faster." Feral; panicked, almost. A deer at the end of a chase. Speaking became impossible. There was only the animal breathing, and the deafening thunder of a dozen hands on the drums.

 

COBRA - 

 

Cobra sighed. It was easy enough to strip in front of a crowd; he'd done it many times before. Set his qualms, his need for privacy like so much cloth, and bare flesh. He pulled his new coverall over his body instead but he felt no different. A different colour, perhaps. A different mood in the room. He still didn't understand. "I have never had dominion over my body," he scoffed quietly, lips quirking into a smile despite himself. It was true; for all his time in the circus, and with the Urdai, and the merchants, and Hamad...  _ dominion _ was quite a foreign concept to him. Perhaps the only time he had felt it was when he had been walking alone in the sands.    
  
"What will happen if I do?" he asked curiously, taking a seat in front of the mirror. He tried looking at the man through the mirror's reflection not, just as he had said. So many eyes upon him. Perhaps, when he was a god, if he became a god, he would be the sort of god to blind the eyes of those who would look at him. These dark thoughts clouded his mind until he caught sight of a glimmer in the mirror with a gasp.

A form, but not quite. As if someone had used gossamer to line the edges of the creature, or blue starlight. He could still see through the space between the lines. They made legs, too long and too tall to put the body attached within the boundary of the mirror's frame. Even as he instinctively turned to look, an ethereal, long-fingers hand stopped his cheek. He could not feel it, but his head stopped turning all the same. A whimper escaped him before he shook himself a little, trying to focus on hearing Eilif's instructions. Even with them, something felt wrong, putting him ill at ease. He could have brought Keht about so easily if they just asked. What was the point of doing it this way, this fearsome way?   
  
Ghostly fingers traced his cheek. He watched them, wide-eyed, in the mirror. Breathing deeply. He did not feel Keht fighting to take over his body; rather, he could have sworn he heard him laughing. Cackling above the din of drums, in the way a man might when he was spinning wildly in circles. There was pain at his face now, on both sides, and he realised it was with his own hands that he dug his fingers into his cheeks, keeping his gaze firmly on the mirror's reflection. With another jolt of his heart he noticed the gossamer figure was gone, and his own face became queasy to look at in a way he couldn't place. That was, until, his mind recognised the third eye bulging wide on his forehead.

The din became quiet for Cobra after that. Buckling forward, his hands splayed on the tiles, leaving small smears of blood underneath his fingertips. These hands pushed against the floor until the man was standing, head held high. The breathing games had stopped, only a calm rattle in his throat now. A different expression entirely on his face as he regarded the witch haughtily.   
  
"He does not need to fear me, you know," he chided the child. "He does not need to fight. I have watched over his people since they were put on my lands. Do you think I would ever willingly cause them harm?"


	16. Into the Mirror

EILIF -

 

Eilif woke to blackness. His cheek on stone. The nauseating pull of realizing that up and down weren’t where they’d been before. Hazel eyes peeled open to the mirror, to the girls, whose drumming had stopped and now only lingered in echoes that might have been imagined. They hummed a dim and discordant tune. They would be ready to shriek, to sing again, in defense of the scarcely tenable balance between men and gods in this lavish chamber.   
  
The shaman pushed himself to kneel again, rod clutched against his chest, as if to protect him from all this strangeness—the harmony of this place, as told to him by the apprentices’ voices, was unrecognizable. And there was heat. All at once very distant, and very close; like his skin was too near to a flame. He knew it to be the Urdai in their tents. A buzzing, indiscernible, like too many speaking at once.   
  
But all these things were like candlelight next to that great  _ fire _ . His eyes went to Keht, and his breath quit his lungs. Clutching the rod tighter, he mindlessly ran his thumb over the stones studding the thing, just as they did the mirror; counting sapphire and agate and ruby and amber and quartz. He did not stand to see him eye-to-eye. He sat where he was, curled around his trinket, his wide eyes understanding and utterly failing to understand the thing before him. Fixated. Like a child.   
  
It took him some time to speak. When he did, his voice was like the rest of him: Strange, and fitful, and of some other place than this. “His people,” he whispered. That far-near heat. “A broken people, broken for years and years. Do you remember—” His brow furrowed in half-confusion, half-pain. “Do you know why you have come back to us? Do you know why he was chosen? This Cobra.”

 

KEHT -

 

Even now, they sought to confine him. Keht hummed softly as he considered the thought, and the mirror. Annoying, yes, to not be able to move freely and look where he wished, but he would not break the rules that had been put in place. After feeding on the goat, he was reasonable enough for that. Still, he would be lying if he claimed not to take some form of comfort in the trepidation painted on the witch's face. His awe, his fear.    
  
"You called my vessel a boy, before," he said softly. "Do you understand now, how you were wrong? We are so much older. And childhood has long passed."    
  
Undulating tongues. The Urdai, of course, would know that something was happening. They could feel it, just as he could feel Urd's presence out on the desert sands. He closed his eyes and tried to reach out to him, but the tendrils of thought did not get very far. Bound, too, by the mirror. As if he were in a box. His blue eyes opened with a frown as Eilif carried on."Broken by those who would enslave us," he glowered, warning in his tone. "By those who would exploit our labour and preach for false gods. Those who do not belong here. Yet even now, they are watched over. I made sure of it. I never left them." The being seemed to take offense at the insinuation, however slight, that he might have  _ left _ his people.    
  
The surface of the water again. It hung over their heads like a ceiling, uncomfortably close compared to the room palatial chamber they had been standing in moments before. "The currents took me. They must have," he murmured, eyes darting about as he attempted to piece together flickering memories. "The land is even older than I. The land knows. It brought me to him. Even all the way north, beyond my domain, the land found me a vessel with great destiny. He knows despair like an old friend. That is a good match, for me."

He ran his fingers through Cobra's hair, again trying to coax out the length of it. It was slow progress, but he would get it there, in time. "What of you, little witch?" he asked, seeking the Northlander's eye in the mirror's reflection but not finding it. "What brings you to harmonise with the spirit world, with me? Why did you and your kin come to this place so far from home?"

 

EILIF -

 

_ The currents. _ Eilif gasped, but didn't seem to take air—the room was heavy, claustrophobic, and every little movement took twice the effort. He brought the rod to the space beside him, the end of it an inch above the floor. A moment of hesitation. Listening to the old spirit speak of the land, and of his vessel, the shaman's next breath seemed to come easier. He took the rod into his lap again, and nodded. Despair. Suffering. He and the other witches knew the bond between trauma and magic intimately; it was  _ despair _ that had brought each of them into the mountains to begin with, and in turn, it was that despair that drew these spirits to them in their work. He would not ask Cobra, nor Keht, the nature of the vessel's suffering. It was irrelevant now.   
  
When the spirit posed the question of him, he considered it quietly. It didn't occur to him to lie. It wasn't in his spirit to  _ lie _ , and neither did it seem to be in Keht's; ancient things were rarely mischievous, except for the souls of some winds and a few near-forgotten songs.   
  
"We came because we were needed," he answered simply, voice scarcely heard above the women's humming. "We go where we are called. We have been called into the plains and onto the sea, and down into the foothills where our people once communed with yours; and now we were called to Navan, to see what could be done to heal this Cobra. You have not hurt him, of course you have not hurt him, but still he has feared you. Still he has done this violence to himself. He does not want to be separate from you; so we must heal this schism between you."

There seemed to be a kind of dissatisfaction with his own answer woven into the features of his face. "And, too, we came to speak with you." Holding the rod to his chest, shoulders curled around it, he rose to his knees; and then, after a moment, to his feet. "If it was true that it was Keht who had taken this man." He took a half-step closer to the prophet, and his lips flickered and grew into a rapturous smile. "And it is true."   
  
Another step. His joy vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced with a sort of strain that hunched his shoulders and put grief into his face. "There is imbalance, Keht." And now the gap was closed, so that he stood next to the creature. He watched him in the mirror, unblinking, even as his eyes reddened with the effort of being so near, and tears skimmed over fair cheeks. "It isn't right that your people are lost; it isn't right that we and the Urdai have not shared our magic with each other in so long. Our Mothers' hearts are broken. Olrun's heart is broken."

 

KEHT -

 

Despite its quietness, Keht heard the man perfectly. He could hear all of the voices in the room and then some more beyond it, where his so-called broken people knelt in the sand with bated breath, murmuring feverishly as they ran their fingers through the ochre earth. "It cannot be healed," he answered plainly, tilting his head as he regarded the man in the mirror. "Not without that which was taken from me. My light. My... amber, yes. It is amber." He recalled what he had learning in the tent. Again, supressed the urge to turn around, for it would feel so natural to him. The witch standing was a welcome distraction. He chuckled.   
  
"You would not stand before me if I was whole," he boasted, watching him intently. "Only one man has stood before me when I was whole and felt no fear. Or perhaps two..." he frowned. "It was many years ago. Yet the whispers of me seem to remain, if only whispers." He watched, somewhat warily, as the witch approached. The exertion of the act was off-putting; it made the spirit keep his hands to himself, feeling almost alien to those tears from a man who clearly had more empathy than the ancient being had felt in a long time.

"You weep for my people," he murmured, the voice managing to come out as a rasp through Cobra's throat albeit nowhere near as imposing as he had intended. "Yet will you shed blood for them, I wonder? Will you take up the fight to expel the fire-worshipping scum who took my people for slaves, decimated our numbers, desecrated my vessel? My amber." Above them, the surface of the water surged angrily as though whipped up by a storm. An ungodly phantom echo of a shout tore through the room and there was a flash of a man standing behind them in the mirror, manic-eyed and wearing a crimson robe embroidered with the emblem of a burning tree. He mouth silent words, lips twitching in an unhinged grimace, reaching forward, and then he was gone.    
  
"I will not rest until it is returned to me," Keht glowered. "It is a part of me. Do you understand, child?"

 

EILIF -

 

“Yes.” The word had gotten stuck in Eilif’s throat, and now he seemed to swallow down the echo of it. “I understand.” His gaze still fixed on the space between them in the mirror, where fire had come and gone, and he touched his thumb again to stones of onyx, amethyst, jade. “We will go with you to the Capital. We will witness it. We go where we are needed.”   
  
He looked to Keht again, his body at once like a man’s and somehow unlike it in the mirror. He held his eyes like he might a statue at a shrine. The majesty of it, the brilliance, and this was him incomplete; they would go, yes, and see what it meant for this ancient thing to be whole again, and for Cobra and Keht to be of one mind. They would see it. They would commune with the Urdai. They would bring these wisdoms back to the mountains, and heal Olrun’s heart.   
  
“He has said, too,” he murmured, “that you have business in the North.” He pushed his back a little straighter, only for it to curl again, as if cowed. “What do you remember of it...? The land, the people, Olrun?” His free hand, closest to the old god, lifted nearly to touch his fingertips to those of the southerner. An invitation. “Will you show me? And I will show you, too, what I have seen, and dreamed, and what the land’s souls have shown me.”

 

KEHT -

 

"Then you will know fear," Keht chuckled, but not unkindly. Running his tongue over his teeth under his lips (too short, too blunt) he noted the sheer number of women in the mirror and hummed in thought. "They say this mission to the Capital is one of stealth. The usurper means to rise up and take the throne. There are many of you witches, and your pale skin stands out. You may cause trouble, if you mean to witness everything. Unless you know how to spy from a distance." He would not put it past them, for he had heard many whispers of Olrun and these witches over the centuries.   
  
"Not I," his blue eyes slid back to meet EIlif's in the glass. "Sigvard's business. I merely agreed... to make it so he could return." He quirked an eyebrow as his hand was touched. Presumptuous. And troublesome, in a way, for as he laced his fingers with the others and tilted his head at the mirror again, he wasn't sure how to share a vision. It had always been in the eyes, that was the trick to it, yet he was mindful of the warning not to look at any living thing like this.   
  
"I have visions," he nodded. "None of Olrun, but of old times. Times I have been wronged." Above them, the water gave a pulse, but it was much calmer than before. The hand holding helped. "But I cannot share them like this. It is not my way, to do it without looking. You have to let me inside your head."

 

EILIF -

 

Valdis had risen. Eilif caught the muddy image of her pale form in the mirror, at the rear of the circle—she wouldn’t enter it, but she wouldn’t need to. Their Mother could call to the girls as easily as he could, and they would put an end to this all in an instant.   
  
“The mirror is my protection,” he whispered, by way of explaining his hesitation and the woman-witch’s sudden guard. “And Cobra’s.” His mind was fixed on the heat in the southerner’s hand, and that far-off buzzing in the direction of the desert tents. “I am far from the mountains; I have no roots here. It is too easy in times like these for Mothers to lose themselves to confused souls; I have seen it done, women corrupted, and the victims too go mindless.”   
  
A silence. His words seemed somehow empty. His brow pinched, and he shivered again under the crushing weight of the room. “But you are strong today, and there is a peace in you that was not there when we met you at the docks.” The visit to the tents in the night. This thing had been witnessed, yes,  _ from a distance _ , in the same manner that they would come to see the events in the Capital. “There has been a sacrifice? You have been appeased.” Dangerous, still, but much less so than a fretting, chaotic,  _ hungry _ thing.   
  
“You will protect him, you will protect Cobra.” He had been convinced, by now, but then those lost Mothers had been too; he spoke the words aloud, now, so that Valdis could decide sense on his behalf. “You will not harm me.” She didn’t move. She didn’t utter a word.

So he took a half-step, remembering the difficulty of walking, tightening his grip and putting the rod’s end to the floor to prop him up as he carried on. His eyes closed, he stood then between Keht and the mirror. The  _ heat _ of him. Sweat tickled the short locks at the back of his neck and slid down the length of his spine. “ _ Falt _ , then.” Too early. Meant to be spoken when all this was over. His lids lifted, but it was another moment before hazel eyes met blue. The sheer  _ relief _ struck his body in a gasp, and he stood straighter, seeming to shrug away all that crippling weight. “Show me. Everything that must be seen.”

 

KEHT -

 

"Then cast it aside," Keht replied calmly. "You do not need to fear my wrath. I am simply old and settled in my ways." He could feel the difference thought, and Eilif was right to take cautions. Had he not been fed, felt the love of his people, received a sacrifice, he would be reckless and wild indeed. Now, though, simply uncompromising. He'd known he'd get him way from the moment he made the suggestion; he could see it in the boy's body language, and the woman's too. The word was spoken and he stopped forward as though it were the next step of a dance, taking the witch's face in his hands. Lips closed over his but his blue eyes stayed open, staring for a beat before the surging sound of water took them down into the abyss of his memories as though they had stepped through a veil. It was a happy memory, mercifully.   
  
Urd.   
  
An Urd less severe, though, with his head uncovered and long locks of black hair framing his angular face. Bathed in warm light shining through tent canvas. This memory seemed to lack sound, and it moved in flickers. The enamoured look in his eyes as he lifted the large, round amber in the palm of his hand, the way they creased up into crescent moons as he used a finger to press the gem to his forehead. The brilliant gleam of his teeth and his opened his mouth and laughed.

Hands clenching loose red fabric. White knuckles tightening as a fat lock of hair fell into his lap, followed by a single teardrop. His head lifted to a mirror, catching the gleam of silver scissors brandished before anything else. A Keht from very long ago, wiry and tall though he was supplicated now, fair of face save for the burn spreading up from his eyebrow and eating into his hairline. It hurt to catch sight of his butchered hair and he flinched from it as though it were sunlight, as thought the  _ snip _ of the scissors were teeth. "Please," a whimper. "Y-you can keep me, just let my people go."    
  
Manicured hands wrenched the long hair that remained and there was a jolt and a scream. Rainfall and the slap of knees in mud. No; a primordial, bubbling sound; a pool of black tar that came away red as a figure slowly rose out of the surface, wet and glistening. Insect-like limbs slowly unfurled, their forms difficult to trace in the dim moonlight. A haunting command:  _ Speak your name _ .

Another heartbeat and it was the rain again, fat droplets pattering to the ground. The slap of knees in mud, a distressed grunt as a heavier set followed. He was not inside this one; not yet. Standing over them, unseen. Detached, perhaps, after his long journey, detached enough to simply stand and stare as the young man in the mud struggled under the grip of the circus punter whose smoky breath burned hot in his ear. Whose hands roamed greedily over his flesh as his other arm forced his spine to bend. Who groped him between his legs, where the rain was turning the fabric of his costume sheer.    
  
This young Cobra, face carrying a grimace that would carry well into adulthood, tears blending with the rain, twisted and reached back with his hands, clenching his teeth as he found a tight grip in greying hair. But then there was a pause, his taut stomach rising and falling with his exertion. It was in that moment that the young man seemed to notice that where Keht's invisible form loomed over him, no rain drops fell. There was a softening in his face, a mix of wonder laced with fear, but only for a moment. His jaw tightened again as he wrenched the head in his grip heard the  _ crack _ of the man's neck behind him.

And then he was gone. The scene remained, rain drops static, their surroundings just a little more muted in the bleak Northern twilight. The corpse remained discarded in the mud but standing there was Cobra as he was today, coverall and all. Keht and Eilif's consciousnesses separated, finally, and the man would find himself standing next to him in the surreal, frozen scene.    
  
"I knew he was the one to carry me," he murmured, looking down at the man. "He had a cruelty, a strength that I needed to gain to face what was to come. Something I lost a long time ago, I think." Slowly, he turned his head to Eilif. "What is it that you want to know, child?" he asked. "What do you want from me?"

 

EILIF -

 

Too many witches before him would have felt it. The flood of terror, thrill, ecstasy, over and over until they were inseparable, coming and going as quickly as the patchwork of images that didn't quite linger long enough for him to fully understand before being swept away by the next. Urd, the amber, and then a grief that wrenched his heart and made him want to fall to his  _ knees in mud _ only until he was captivated by that oily human, inhuman thing, like he'd seen in the mirror. It had been an instant and infinity at once. And Eilif had lost himself in it. The fool. The child.   
  
_ "What do you want from me?" _   
  
His wide eyes went to the ancient thing, and wasn't that strange, because he couldn't remember the precise moment when he'd reclaimed dominion over seeing for himself. His lips opened, and for a moment he didn't seem to know how to use them.   
  
"Everything," he breathed. His head turned to the body in the mud. So he could move—he lifted the hem of his tunic, and moved towards the grisly sight, and stooped low to inspect it. "Forgive me." He shook his head. Sane enough to realize  _ everything _ was impossible, too much, too vague. "Your story has been such a strange one." He was prattling, rushed, half-distracted as he lifted pale fingers (empty of the rod—?) to push into dead flesh. "There is so much of it I wish to know."

It was a dream, he thought, like the ones delivered to him by the spirits of ruined forts and still lakes. He rose, and searched on the horizon for the mountains, but the fog of the rain made it impossible. "So it's true?" His mind seemed disjointed from his speaking, and his body further still, now walking to the nearest tent just to see. "In—in the Northlands, when a fire takes a forest," he explained, the words tumbling out of his mouth as his hands came together and parted again in mime of the event. "When a fire takes a forest, its spirit grows quiet until the first green shoots come again. Its soul is there until the end, and then at the start again. You see? Or there are gods, our gods, who make themselves ageless, as Olrun does. But you—you are not ageless, and neither are you joined with them from the start, these men. You were not joined with Cobra from the start; it was only later. So it's true."   
  
He opened the flap, then, only to peer into darkness. The smell of hay and feet. No, no; he turned on his heel and marched instead for the edge of the rain. "Strange," he remarked, faintly. If only he could see the mountains, he could make a home for himself here, in this dream, in his own mind. He could bring some familiarity to it. "I must come to know everything." What a nuisance that he didn't. "We have been to the ancient city, but so much of it is burned, and stolen, and its soul is shattered—we know so little, Keht. Do you remember your beginnings? When, and where...?" Talking himself breathless between the smack of his feet. "And Urd. And the custom of you. Are all these things lost to you until we find your amber?"

Very abruptly, he stopped, and turned to find Keht's eyes with his own. "You can do all this without your amber. But you had it with your people; you must have had power, great power." Men would not stand before him. "You must have seen much. Why, then, this custom...?" He touched fingertips to his own neck. "Why is this done, do you remember? Cobra himself doesn't understand."

 

KEHT -

 

Everything. He really was a child. Keht looked on, face unchanging, waiting for Eilif to realise and correct himself. He was willing to treat such a naive request with patience because he really had walked the earth for only  a heartbeat compared to the old spirit, but there were other things he was not so willing to tolerate. He reached out and grabbed the man's wrist with a warning growl, stopping him from tampering with the body of the dead. "Do not disturb the memory," he scolded, voice a rumble. "It is not mine alone to disturb."   
  
Cobra's, too. He kept a keen eye on the man as he pottered about, less worried about the way he manipulated trivial things such as tent flaps. His musing gave the spirit pause. Some of it did not sound quite right, yet it was said with such conviction that it made Keht's brow furrow. "Do I age?" he wondered aloud. "Can anything age while it does not have a form. Even while I reside in a vessel, the vessel does not age. This day was not the day I stepped into Cobra, I merely walked alongside him as he grew. The body of a boy not quite yet a man does not make a good vessel, especially when I was so weak."

He frowned. He did not know what Eilif was doing; many things about him, the way he moved and the things he said, were strange. Yet Keht had encountered strange before and managed well enough. In fact... he peered at the boy, tilting his head. Something about him, the way his words ran away with him and his voice lost breath. "Are you the zealot?" he asked aloud. The question came before he could quite think it through, doubt filling his heart as he gave it more thought. Yet the word grew blurry around them, like an artist's painting of the place that had been left out in the very same rain,, and a sunlight bloomed with the faint sound of wind chimes and the smell of jasmine. Wheat fields. A smiling boy in a hessian shift. There was a crudely whittled ankh strung around his neck.   
  
It was another silent picture, like the memory of Urd. Even as Keht looked on, it faded, and he glanced between the two with an uncertain frown. "You remind me of someone, I think, but it would be impossible. He's... gone, I'm sure of it." Red. A flash of it, a quick glimpse of it splattered on the ground. Keht felt his heart rate pick up with the talk of the choking, taking a wary step back with narrowed eyes as though he expected the witch to come at him with throttling hands.

"The choking is for me," he gave a quick little nod with a huanted look in his eyes. "I am sure of it. It is to... remind me, I think..." Gingerly, he raised his hand and touched his throat. His head knocked against tiles before he even squeezed, a floor suddenly aligned before him where there had been air only moments before. His feet slipped in blood, unable to get traction. The scene appeared in a surreal intersection of planes, the floor holding its own gravity for Keht but not his Northern guest.   
  
_ WHAT DID YOU DO?! _ A voice bellowed. He felt a vicelike grip and snatched his hand away with a cough. With his feet no longer under him, he crumpled back into the mud. Taking deep breaths, he thrust his hands under the surface as if to keep them safe.    
  
"I have forgotten," he frowned. "There is not enough. Not enough pieces. Too much of me is in my amber, you see. It is safer that way, to coexist. I never expected to be parted from it." 

 

EILIF -

 

The voice rattled the shaman's bones, and the colour of blood left his fair skin. He was chilly, now, in the rain and the mud. Staring at the air where that impossible floor had been. "I understand," he said faintly, nodding after a moment. Switching his gaze to Keht's. More firmly, now: "I understand." The old god was stolen, shattered, like the ancient city; it had been foolish to ask so much of him while he was like this.   
  
So he stepped very gingerly closer. Awe still in his eyes; a sort of fear, still. But a promise, too, that he didn't mean to do him harm. "I will not ask about the custom again," he murmured, coming to stand at his feet. It burned in him to know who that voice belonged to, and what it was that he had done, and the reason why he ought to be reminded of it through this persistent, ugly violence. But he would choke these questions down. Until this impossible creature had his amber again.   
  
Pale hands lifted, supplicant, offering a place for Keht's hands at least as safe as the mud. "The zealot," he echoed quietly. There was something in that fleeting memory, something as old as magic, that had seized him completely and made him forget his feverish desire to find the mountains on the horizon. "Cobra told me that he remembered fields, and goatherds, and things. Will you show me what you remember? And this boy I remind you of." Colour and warmth came back to his flesh. "If you like, I can show you what I have seen of the steppes. I have warm memories. Whole ones. They may help you in remembering."

 

KEHT -

 

He could hear the sound of his own breathing, heavy in his ears. Raking fingers through ebony hair, he pulled one lock away, over two feet long. He glanced at it with a queasy expression, feeling it in his fingertips but knowing it couldn't be there. A bad sign. "The zealot," he murmured, voice growing haunted as the sound of echoing footsteps began to consume the gloom of the memory where they stood. The wind chimes carried a different quality to them when they weren't backed by the warm glow of sunlight; all they were was distant and sad now. And the  _ fire _ , how it had  _ roared _ .   
  
Keht's breath quickened as he found himself sudden staring face to face with the charred trunk of a tree.    
  
"No," he said suddenly, turning and marching towards the witch. "No, our time here is done." He grabbed his face, roughly, pulling him close just as the screams began to sound. The ghosts of them lingered even as he came to, still standing, grip too tight on the man's jaw. He took his hand away without apology, running it through his own hair with his brow furrowed in concern. It was all the same length; that one lock had just been an illusion, a memory. He took a deep breath.

"I am tired," he announced, staring into his own eyes, or Cobra's eyes, to be fair, in the mirror. The things he had recalled in the memories troubled him. The feeling of emptiness. Not quick like hunger, for it lacked the aggression, the pangs that came with such a feel. There was simply a void in him that he did not know how to fill. Not that more blood would hurt.    
  
"Do not ask more of this thing of me until I have fed again. The vessel's belly cannot keep up with my appetite. You will have to wait."

 

EILIF -

 

Dread flooded Eilif's heart when he saw the old god come for him, and it crossed his mind to run. Not terror; an all-consuming curiosity. His spirit wanted so madly to stay in this place, to see what it could, and to learn all the things he'd failed to pull from the memories of that ancient city. He wished to know everything.  _ Everything _ . And he didn't understand it now, but if Keht had not been quicker, stronger, the shaman might have lingered here forever.   
  
With his jaw released from that iron grip he was doubled over again, curled around that rod, although it was much easier to bear the prophet's presence now than before.  _ Tired _ . He nodded. The exhaustion was familiar. The ache in his bones. "It is done, then." He closed his eyes and let his mind fall into the swell of the women's humming, the gentle rain of their fingers on the drums. "Give him back to us; give yourself over to Cobra." It was unusual to ask, rather than command. Lids lifted to slivers, and he caught the figure in the mirror. A warning: "There will be drums again." At last, at last, he thrust the rod to the ground in a crack like thunder.

 

SIGVARD -

 

It had been quiet too long. Sigvard had chewed his lip to bloody, and his neck cramped from craning to stare at that door—some fifty feet down the hall, the closest he'd allow himself to come. There had been some illusion of conversation with Irfan beside him, to pass the time, but now he couldn't remember what was last said, and  _ when _ . Had there been a question...? Had he not answered?   
  
A crack like thunder, and the rush of drums again. Every nerve in his skin seemed to sting at once.

"It's done," he said, once, and then again when the last echoes clattered down the corridor and there was quiet. His fists tight, spine rigid, he made long strides to the door, watching it crack for a woman's wary face to spy him. He seized the handle, wrenched it open, nearly took her along with it. When his hulking frame pushed its way into the room, neither her nor sitting women seemed to make a fuss. If he slowed at all—and only barely—it was only because of the strangeness of the place. The mirror, the smell, the cushions all shoved away. And there was a sort of heaviness, a tiredness that seemed to have afflicted every one of them.   
  
His blue eyes flashed to Cobra, and to Eilif, both in the middle of the circle, both standing, although it seemed to take some effort. Confusion put a sharp frown on his face and kicked a breath out of him that was a substitute for all his million questions; what had Keht shown him, told him, and was Cobra worse or better for it...? A million questions, but scarcely any hesitation. His arms lifted, and he stepped over the sleepy women in their circle, all in a rush to collect his little master and pull him tightly close.

 

KEHT -

 

"He doesn't like the drums. Or you, very much," Keht delivered the news frankly, staring at the witch. Still, he relented, even as the cacophony of drums swelled around them, leaving the little human who filled the place of Cobra's consciousness as he departed confused, and whipped up into a frenzy. He whirled around, heart speeding up with the beating of the drums. It was as if his body had forgotten the fatigue that had filled it moments before. He bared his teeth at Eilif, a hard glare of mistrust in his blue eyes, hands balling to fists. He might have lashed out at the man if his body had not been scooped up by a certain large Northerner who was hellbent on taking him into his arms.   
  
Grunting, hissing unintelligibly, he wriggled until he was more held than crushed, climbing Sigvard's thick trunk until his legs found comfortable purchase wrapped around meaty hips. Peering over Sigvard's shoulder, he seethed at the witch.   
  
"You did something," he accused. "You seem more familiar that before. Like a face in the crowd." It vexed him. It could not have been the night tent, for he would have been too young all those years ago. Ye still, he was plagued by the nagging sensation that he had met the man before, and it had been during a dark and secret time, much like the things that went on behind the folds of that godforsaken canvas.

"Sigvard," he piped up, turning his face into the junction of the man's neck and pressing close. He chose to put the witch out of his mind for now; he had had enough of his games and his obsession with Keht for one day. "I want to be alone. I want to be with you. I am sick of the eyes."

 

SIGVARD -

 

What an utter  _ relief _ it was to be grappling with that rabid thing again, to stand stubborn against the manic thrust of his hands and elbows, to coo pointlessly at him and to try and find a place where his thick arms could coil around him comfortably. It was reassuring, their little dance, until he was startled by that venomous charge aimed at the shaman.   
  
It took a second or two to find a way to arrange himself so that he and Cobra both could see the look on Eilif's face—a sort of confusion, a sort of guilty surprise, as if all at once the southerner's accusation made some sense and yet none at all. "I didn't," the small thing whispered. But that was all. His eyes were soon going to the ground, and his hand lifted to seize the waiting arm of an apprentice. To go off to the cushions, to join the rest.   
  
There was a moment of silence after this latest command. He nodded, finally, and hauled Cobra closer still, and turned for the door. "Yes," he murmured. "We're alone." It was true only in the most obstinate of imaginations, as he wasn't yet in the hall when he said it; and even then, there was the guard, and the usual scattering of staff as he made his hurried way back to the slave's own quarters. But he laid his wide hand on the back of the man's head, cradling his face in the meat of his neck, so that he could at least close his eyes and pretend it.

He would not ask of the ceremony, he decided; at least not now. It had seemed only to bring confusion. Unpleasantness. There was still the matter of what Cobra had said of Urd after their time in the tents, too—it had been long hours, long days, long  _ weeks _ of this strain, and his godling was long overdue for some rest.   
  
"I fetched you grapes." Seeing the door, the snake, seemed to remind him. "And meat, if you like." He pushed his way through the great wooden thing, its familiar creak and clatter introducing a welcome silence. The promised morsels were on the table, spilling from a napkin. He winced at the afternoon sun, and squeezed his arms tighter, although he knew Cobra's usual instinct was to be on his feet by now and going this way or that. Couldn't he bring him this way or that...? "Would you like to eat? Let's have some peace. I can feed you."

 

COBRA -

 

The denial was met with yet more seething, but at least Cobra held his tongue, letting out a growling breath instead as his legs tightened their hold on the man’s thick trunk. He did not believe Eilif in the slightest, and he trusted him even less. Even now he could feel the witch’s infatuation with Keht glowing off him like embers off red-hot coal. That kind of fascination was dangerous.

Cobra retreated, then, into the crook of Sigvard’s neck, cooing at the attention and the promises of solitude. To be held like this so soon after the man had pushed him away and claimed to be afraid of him... it was good. Yes, that was the right word for it, solid and true. Desperately, desperately  _ good _ .

“No meat,” he shook his head, feeling as if he might react badly should one more morsel of meat pass his lips. The grapes, however, had his attention even as he wriggled, wanting to be set down just as he Northerner had predicted. When he was held fast, he leaned back so he could look Sigvard in the face.

“Some grapes, then,” He bartered, managing a faint smile. “I have a feeling you’d prefer that anyway, wouldn’t you, Sigvard?” He chuckled, recalling the first time they had met. “You’ll have to release me first.”

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander held on a moment longer, a wicked delight in his eyes as he watched the little thing’s face. He didn’t need to put words to it. It was enough to push his lips to Cobra’s cheek in a chaste but  _ furious _ kiss that had him at the mercy of the scratch of Sigvard’s beard. His god-king was strong today, even if he couldn’t see it, in spite of his ordeal with the shamans and Keht and Urd and the rest. It was good to see—his strength, his smile. It was the sort of thing that made him want to beat his chest and laugh to fill the room.   
  
He refrained, barely, so that he could set the man very gently down. To the table, then, where he sat with a heavy huff. “That was a good night,” he muttered through a wry smile, catching the southerner’s meaning. A simpler night. Spoiled fucking rotten, and still believing, the fool, that he’d had Hamad under his spell.   
  
Thick fingers did their best impression of delicateness, tucking the meat away in the napkin and producing a generous bunch of the plump treats. He picked through them in a hunt for the finest. “I have wondered,” he mused, “what it was like for you before. Before I came to you and stuck to you like a burr.” There; a fat little thing, round and juicy and without any marks. He produced it for Cobra’s lips. “In the moments between Hamad’s guests, when you were alone. What did you do to pass the time?”

 

COBRA -

 

He grumbled into the kiss but did not pull away, letting his eyes close at the long-missed sensation. To be close again... he was willing to make allowances in order to keep it that way. As odd as it sounded, having Keht's hunger sated had put Cobra in better spirits, too. Or perhaps knowing the nature of what was inside him had given him some perspective.    
  
Finally back down on his own two feet, the little deity stretched like a cat, waiting for Sigvard to sit before he draped himself across the cushions, laying on his back with his head in the man's lap so he might be fed one morsel at a time. The question was a surprising one; the man stifled a laugh as he chewed the sweet fruit, swallowing with relish. "I was making connections, of course," he chuckled, blue eyes sliding to his well-stocked poisons cabinet.   
  
"These poisons were not here before I came. I was told as a slave I was never to leave the palace, so naturally I snuck out almost every other night. Apothecaries, mostly. Sometimes the brothel, after I had met Irfan. I built up my collection in the same way slaves before me must have built up that wardrobe," he flicked a hand towards the garments spewing from the shelves. "It's funny," he drawled. "I never made any effort to hide the poisons once I got them. Hamad must have known I was disobeying orders, yet he never cared to challenge me. Perhaps he intended to use me as a  _ nadameer _ killer all along."

Stretching, he lifted himself up a little so that he could fold his arms behind his head, carefully settling back down. "And what of you?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "What were you doing before you got the bright idea to impersonate a diplomat?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

The idea of Hamad carrying on with a years-long conspiracy earned a faint, contemplative grunt from the Northlander as he took up another grape. It seemed feasible enough: The Duke was clever, yes, and a damned liar. But Sigvard was sure by now that he was a coward too, and there was a part of him that wondered if the prick hadn’t just been frightened into submission at the prospect of a little of Cobra’s venom. Like the slaves had been, and Sig, too, in his time.   
  
His eyes fell to his godling’s lips, and the next grape did, too. In lieu of answering the question returned to him right away, he shifted his weight to make a more comfortable cradle out of his lap, and let his jobless arm rest heavy on his little master’s chest. Calloused fingertips played with the fabric of his coverall idly, as a muttering snagged in his throat.   
  
“Mercenary work, these last years, after I came down from the mountains.“ After the southern girl, and their boy, and his losing and reclaiming of his sanity. “I took what paid. War and raiding, sometimes; others, killing and thieving.” As though one couldn’t be conflated with the other. ”It was this way I made my enemies. I was exiled by the time I came to Mottstad. I was lucky that they did not know me there.” As this sort of news was typically spread through loud outrage over drink, it had taken some time to reach the settlement. “I drank and fucked away the daylight—it was a girl of the prince’s house who first let me on to the negotiations, I think.” He couldn’t be sure; his memory was more holes than substance. “I remember I thought it was a fateful thing. I was looking to run, and the gods showed me the desert, and gave me a way to it.”

Another resettling of his limbs. He curled over Cobra as though to shade him from what little of the setting sun came through the drapes; and after the next morsel was delivered, his thumb and his gaze traced the line of his jaw in dim preoccupation. “Now I am sure it was fate.” He was slow to fetch the next grape—two, one for himself. “We will go to the Capital,” he murmured as he chewed. “I do not think I will die there. I’m meant to see you to something greater.” The corners of his lips tugged wide, and a spark in his eye danced at the memory of that morning. Like an animal stood over him, hissing threats at the shaman. “And, too, I have this fierce little thing to protect me.”

 

COBRA -

 

_ Mottstad _ . Cobra narrow his eyes and gave a faint grunt at the word. the circus had not traveled there, but the sound of the place was similar enough to the rest of the towns in the stinking North to put a bad taste in his mouth. He'd always despised the northern tongues. He could understand snippets, most of them obscene, but the common tongue was the only language he knew through and through. Robbed of Urdai tongue. Yes, that was what he thought of it.   
  
"It is no wonder you know so much about fighting and killing," he mused aloud, accepting the next grape with a pensive frown. He recalled their sparring on the balcony, but he also recalled how it had ended, so he was reluctant to bring it up. "Fucking, too," he clicked his tongue. He'd never taken to women in quite the same way that Sigvard had. Perhaps it had been something to do with the way the other performers had been treated at the circus. He'd seen the aftermath of women who had been fucked and even now it struck a nerve; a dozen or more deaths in childbirth. And those were the ones who made it to birthing in the first place.

"The Capital," he lifted his head a little, welcoming the next grape with the pad of his tongue. The name of the place brought the strange, clicking sound of foot steps to mind. As he gave his knowledge of Keht's memories a moment's more thought, for they were just that, memories, he frowned. "The Kingslave," he piped up. "And the King's branding. These must have been things that happened after Keht drowned. So how can I see them, hear them, when all other things have been in the past? I wonder." He already knew the answer, or at least he felt he did. If the amber really was so much a piece of Keht as the spirit said, then perhaps it had eyes and ears of its own. Yet he didn't think he could do much to force a specific vision; even with the choking, it was random, and that was the most frustrating of all.   
  
"You belong to me," he murmured, reaching up for the man's ears, managing to grab locks of his shaggy hair to pull him down, arching his spine and pushing up enough to give the man a kiss. "Of course I will protect you. We made a bond."

 

SIGVARD -

 

"We did," the Northlander echoed into that small space between their lips. Even now, he could scarcely move without his body reminding him of the gnarled, tight flesh at his shoulder. And wasn't it a funny thing: The night they had met, Cobra had asked after the stories of the smattering of scars that littered Sigvard's fair skin; but now,  _ now _ , next to that bite, a dozen painful memories seemed perfectly small.   
  
His hands were gentle in taking the southerner's wrists. His stiff body—nearly at its limits, curled like this—strained to bend a little further, to hunt the man's plump lips with his own and to luxuriate in a kiss. Fear was ebbing. The uncertainty and terror and confusion of the last month was at last beginning to leave him, nerve by brittle nerve, thanks to the shamans, and the trip to the Urdai in the night, and most of all the  _ grapes _ after all this meat, meat, meat. A happy noise rumbled in his chest, and his teeth snagged Cobra's lip before leaving it.

Straightening up, he was decisive in hooking his hands into the southerner's underarms. "My little god-king." It was nothing at all to haul him up, up, and to settle him in his own lap to face him. "It is good to see you like this, to hear you speak in this way." Broad hands swept down his sides, his thumbs counting ribs beneath the fabric of his coverall, coming to push into the muscle and bone of his pelvis that he had by now committed to memory. "Your spirit is strong today." A broad smile bared teeth. With his grip bracing Cobra's hips, he tugged him closer in a sudden jolt that was suited just as well for wrestling as it was for fucking, betraying his confusion between the two. "There is a fight in you yet."   
  
His eyes held his godling's, first. But when they dropped—to his lips, his jaw, his chest—a preoccupation complicated his features. "Cobra." Complicated the name, too; made it soft, made it holy. He watched his stare again. "I am sorry for what I have done to you these last weeks. I was vigilant in things that did not matter, and ignorant of those that did. I was foolish." A wave of his head. Granted: "I am foolish, still. But I will not make a prisoner of you again."

 

COBRA -

 

A faint grunt left him as he was moved. Lips swollen from the kiss, he regarded the man with heavy lidded eyes, keeping his muscles slack, making Sigvard use more of his strength to lift him up. It was only when they saw eye to eye that he twisted his hips and put his legs under him, settling into the man's lap with as much familiarity as the Northerner's thumbs felt over the ridges of his pelvis. His unerring stare didn't flicker as he was suddenly jolted forward, though he did lift his hands to thread through Sigvard's hair.   
  
"Strong," he repeated the word in a murmur, but it was with a careful and gradual movement that he tightened his grip in those blonde locks and dragged his head back, exposing his throat to him. There was something raw and animalistic in him now, or perhaps it was still the memories of his youth clinging fresh to the back of his mind. He dipped his head forward and ran his tongue over the mound of Sigvard's Adam's apple, instincts taking precedence over comprehension. Yet he heard that heartfelt apology; of course he did. He heard it and it brought up so many things that he could say that his face flushed with it, teeth grazing over the sensitive swell in the man's throat in a mix of frustration and yearning. How could he possibly hold him to trial over such a thing, for not knowing things that were so ancient and impossible to know? Cobra would have screeched bloody murder if anyone had tried to scold him for the very crime Sig admitted to now.   
  
Fingers in hair kept their grip. As much as the animal in him wanted to ravage him, he knew the man wouldn't rest until he knew he had been heard.

"You could never have known," he murmured, rising up higher on his knees so he could see the man's face again. The words were difficult to string together; sticky, like glue. In the absence of anything mystical to say, he let a breathy snigger escape his lips, eyes crinking at the corners as he leaned in close to the man's ear. "Your god forgives you, Sigvard," he teased. "But should I punish you all the same?" He flexed his fingers in the man's hair, pushing his body against the breadth of his chest. "Would you like it?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Blood rushed deliciously through the warrior's veins at those pretty words in his ear, at those fingers in his hair and their stinging damages. His grip tightened. He sounded a rough-edged noise, half-complaint, half-approval, and in both senses an answer to the question posed of him. Low and giddy laughter came nipping at its heels, and a pulling of that body into his own.   
  
"I like everything you do to me," he muttered. Not good enough. He nodded the best he could against the thorny pain in his scalp, and rocked forward to nip where his neck was mercifully bared by the coverall. "Yes." The flesh there was still mottled, still tender and bruised from weeks of strangling. He swept the fat pad of his tongue against it regardless, and closed his lips to it to suckle blooms of new colour to his skin.   
  
Hands dropped to Cobra's thighs, briefly, then lower, lower to find where his fingertips could slip past the hem and up again to feel the naked skin of his legs. After all this time, it was too much like trespassing in some sacred place. Of course there was no reverence to his movements. Greedy fingers shoved fabric aside to find his flanks soon enough, and sank fiercely into his plump flesh.   
  
"Show me your wrath, Cobra," he murmured, now pushing his forehead to his shoulder, his collar, his chest. Seeking the rigid bump of his pierced nipple with his mouth, he took flesh and barbell and cloth alike between his teeth to tug and twist and to suck when he'd had his fun. Cooing relief, gratitude. "Punish me severely."

 

COBRA -

 

"Even the torment." Sigvard had a different relationship to pain than Cobra did; they were as different in as many ways as they were alike, it seemed. He liked the feeling of the man's tongue at his neck, relishing in the sensation of warmth against the bruises. The hands kneading his flesh, no matter how rough, were ambrosia. Yet there were certain ways his hair could be pulled or his wrists could be bound that were transformative, leaving him harrowed and raw. Sigvard did not have any of these secret switches; at least none that Cobra knew of. Perhaps this was what led him to say silly things like 'severely'. Cobra had to laugh.   
  
"No," he answered sweetly, pushing more of his weight against the man, forcing his needy mouth to relent so that he could stand. He lingered for a moment, pressing the bulge of his cock against the man's cheek, letting him feel the growing heat there. "I do not want to punish you severely, Sigvard. You would not enjoy ' _ severely _ '. But I will have fun with you," he gave an impish smile with the promise, rubbing his thumb over the man's exposed cheek. Suddenly, he pushed away, slinking towards his cabinets.   
  
"Lock the door," he ordered in a drawl. "I will not have the witch interrupting. His eyes already see too much." No poison, this time. Oils. He clenched the fistful of vials as he turned, pulling at the coverall tie behind his neck, leaving his chest exposed as the big hung from his waist. "Do you have a knife on you?" he asked, blue eyes watching the man intently as he moved about the room.

 

SIGVARD -

 

Even the torment. Particularly the torment. Where Sigvard had learned, by now, some of those little tortures that Cobra found delightful and some he found abhorrent, there was no such distinction in the warrior's body.  _ Different _ indeed. Pain was horrible and wonderful at once, whether he was tangled up in southern finery or breathing through the battlefield mud—it kept his heart beating, it captured his spirit and his mind. In this way, he knew he was destined to go to the woods. To find a pelt, to become berserker.   
  
The Northlander rose to his feet in a hurry at the command, his cheeks burning, and not just from the touch that he had forbidden for weeks and weeks.  _ The witch _ . He caught the bitterness on the name, still, but would not ask of it yet. Selfish now. His fingers could hardly manage the latch in his anticipation, and the matter of the shamans only threatened to interrupt this desperate intimacy. After all this and before the trek to the Capital, how many more moments of private closeness would there be...?

He shook his head, first, but when he turned again, his body reminded him of the stiff shape of a blade tied into his belt. Irfan's, from lunching. It would soon be time to start carrying his own, although he handled an ax or a polearm with considerable more grace than the dagger he now tugged free from fabric. "Yes," he mused, as he wiped it clean.   
  
Eyes found Cobra's, curious. Hesitant, maybe, if only his feet weren't carrying him to the smaller man. He knew cutting was one of those little tortures the southerner found abhorrent—he remembered the warning about bruises and blood. So the newly naked skin, now under the careful touch of Sigvard's wide hand, playing across his chest, tracing the line of his collar, wasn't in danger of being mutilated. The soldier's lips pricked with a grin. "You don't mean to shave my beard, I hope." He turned the knife so that his palm held the blade, and nudged the pommel into the flesh of his little master's abdomen. The act made his own swelling cock twitch, all fettered by the nuisance of pants. "That  _ would _ be severe."

 

COBRA -

 

"This is a soldier's knife," Cobra noted as he took the blade, recognising the handle easily. It must have been Irfan's; there was no other reasonable explanation as to why Sigvard would have it. His lips flickered in a smile, reassured somewhat that the two wouldn't be at each other's throats in the same way that they had been when they first met. Still, the time to ask what they had spoke about while Cobra stared into the mirror wasn't now. His brow softened as he reached out to trace the edge of the man's beard with his fingertips. "I don't mean to shave you," he murmured. "But I do mean to cut you, Sigvard. To  _ taste _ you. Here," his head dipped forward, placing a tender kiss on the sweet spot on the man's neck, behind his ear.    
  
It would be intimate and terrible and holy all in the same moment, he was sure of it. He couldn't deny his acquired taste for blood, either, and it would be only that; a taste. He didn't need to  _ feed _ on the man, after all. He could never do such a thing. But even now his kiss hardened, nipping at skin and bringing blood closer to the surface. With a grunt in the back of this throat he broke away, lips wet with spit as he glanced down and worked the tip of the dagger into the man's waistband before the sound of tearing cloth filled the room as he cut the pants open. His warm hand curled around the man's cock, tugging it firmly but to a very slow rhythm.

"One day I'll have a mark that is different to the print of my teeth," the little deity murmured. "You will take the mark on your flesh and you will be my first true follower. Will you let me cut you now, Sigvard? Will you let me cut you then?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander closed his eyes to that stinging kiss, his body now only knowing his god’s by his warmth and touch and words. He swayed closer. Fingers twisted into the fabric of his coverall, he tugged at him, cooing sweet gratitudes at the commanding, luxuriating grip about his cock. A flush prickled the skin of his cheeks and chest and made his hair stand on his end. It was made so much worse by anticipation—of simple touch, of the blade, it didn’t matter.   
  
Against the blackness of his imagination he saw it. Endless desert.  _ One day. _ He nodded vaguely. Endless desert, and Cobra confronting it; as if Sigvard stood behind him, he saw all the shapes in his back carved out by light and shadow. He couldn’t see his face, he couldn’t see his legion, he couldn’t see the two struck brands on his foot being ground into the sand as he marched ever forward. He could see none of it, only light and shadow, but still he knew it was  _ there _ .   
  
Closer. His hands went up to the sides of the man’s neck, thumbs pushing into his jaw to set it proudly. “I see it.” His hips pushed forward. “Cobra.” Grinning lips seized the other’s, nipping carelessly in impression of the fire that burned in him. “I see you walk with the gods.” Thrill made a giddy shiver run through him. “And I follow.” Dropping fingertips to play on his shoulders, gentle where the light would have fallen on them; then harder, harder, digging into the shadows of his shoulder blades and each and every rib. Sucking at his tongue, as if he could taste himself before the first cut.

He was impatient in breaking, biting at his chin. Curling a grip around his knife-wrist and pulling it up, spurring it on. “My flesh is yours. Cut me now; cover me with your mark when it comes to you.” Curling his fingers into the man’s garment, he made to tear it, to free him. “Do what you like with me. My flesh is yours.”

 

COBRA -

 

A brief furrow of confusion on his brow before he was responding hungrily to the kiss as though it were the next step in a dance. Humming, cooing, he stole gasps of air in between the explanation that sent sparks along his nerves and put a thrill in his heart. Sigvard wasn't a seer but logic be damned, those three words  _ and I follow _ had his studded cock achingly hard, tenting out the soft fabric of his coverall. He whined in his throat, bit the man's lip right back at the abrupt departure of his tongue, momentarily beyond words as his hand left the man's cock and grabbed a fistful of hair at the top of his head. The cut was made irreverently, short but fast, and in the next moment his tongue was tracing the wound, spreading the metallic taste over the roof of his mouth as he lapped up the blood that welled there.   
  
Without warning, the little deity swept the man's leg and pushed down, getting him onto the ground. "Mine," he echoed, finally finding words again as he straddled the man and carelessly used the blade to cut the coverall straps at his collar bone. The skin nicked there, welling up blood of his own along the thin cuts but Sigvard would not be permitted to drink. His head was forced down against the tiles, and to the side. Cobra reluctantly dropped the dagger to pull the cloth down his body, forced to stand to get free of the garment.   
  
"On your knees," he croaked, still hunched over to keep his weight on the man's temple. Kicking the cloth off his ankles, he grinned triumphantly as he grabbed a fistful of the cloth still covering his broad rump and yanked it down, exposing him. The meaty  _ slap _ filled the room as his palm came down on one of those cheeks, digging his fingers into the flesh. "Choose an oil, Sigvard," he cooed. "It can be with ginger or without."

 

SIGVARD -

 

There was hardly a moment to register the slip of the knife before that terrible awe of  _ prey _ took Sigvard and emptied his mind of all else. Only a taste. Not a feeding. But with parted lips and neck craning as if to invite Cobra to tear it out, he would have given everything over to that hot and hungry mouth—if only just to feel more of his suckling lips, the edge of his teeth. He remembered Keht’s tongue running over his canines. Too dull for the goat.   
  
On the ground he grunted and bared his teeth in a hissing breath that signified his mind going to animal. Grasping uselessly for the hand rooted against his temple, twisting beneath his weight, he was slow to obey; pretty words like  _ mine _ and  _ on your knees _ raining like hot ash on his skin and making him whine and babble against the sting. He shook his head at that impossible question. Rolling his hips back into that clawing grip, forward again, and back.   
  
“Without,” he barked, breathless. He knew ginger; he knew it would be a nasty thing that would make him go deliciously mindless with pain. But he wanted to feel his little master’s damages in perfect clarity. His hands, his teeth, his ornamented prick. “Without ginger.” The effort of language put knots in his face. “I want to feel you—I want to remember.”

A hot tickle at his neck, blood mingling with sweat and crawling in a rivulet over his skin. He groaned, mournful and yearning, and humped air until he thought to drop a hand to collect his own prick, to tug at himself, to paw at his balls and shove impatient fingers against the twitching ring of his cunt. The weight of Cobra against him. He pushed himself up against it, and his remaining grip, iron around the southerner’s wrist, tugged at him; wanting him closer, wrapped around him and nursing more at the bloody offering.

 

COBRA -

 

An insidious laugh. "Without," he parroted, reaching for a vial of clear oil. He'd last longer without the ginger. "You'll remember, alright." He lifted it to his mouth, intending to use his teeth to rip the cork from the vial, though his wrist was seized before he could do it. His teeth bared at the disruption. "Bad mutt," he growled, fingernails digging deep into the flesh of the man's rump. "Let me go."   
  
He wrestled with the grip, dropping the vial again, until in a fit of animalistic fury he bent down and closed his teeth over the wound, pressing his tongue into the cut. "Whore," he hissed when his hand was free, lips stained pink with the man's smeared blood. Grimacing, his blue eyes swept over the floor and grabbed the amber vial. The scent of ginger teased his nose.   
  
"If you like to feel so much," he glowered, ripping the cork out with his teeth and pulling at the man's elbow as he so desperately tugged at his cock. "Give me your hand. You can stroke yourself with this, but know that I won't stop until I've had my fill of you, Sigvard."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard's temple ground into the tile as he tried for a look at Cobra's snarling face, cheeks reddening in the effort and failure of making his body go the way he wanted it to. No matter. He could imagine it. Grunting, pushing the cleft of his ass clumsily into his godling's lap, he let his heavy, heaving chest fall to stone. The southerner had the all-important  _ leverage _ , and even if he didn't, he had those damned talons in his ass, making crescents that would go blue-black in the coming days.   
  
"Yes," he murmured, losing himself now to the promise of pleasure, "take your fill—my flesh is yours, my flesh is yours." Releasing his prick, he opened a greedy palm for the oil, scarcely waiting for five, six, seven drops before returning to his furious jerking, curling his fist around and around his velvety cockhead. Closing his eyes. Pushing his forehead into stone. Moaning low and sweet to signal his gratitude.   
  
Fire.

Nothing subtle or sneaking about it, just a sudden  _ fire _ swallowing his cock alive. He yelped, pushed himself up against that leverage only to submit to it again, and clutched at his burning cock as if to protect it from a hidden viper in the bush.  _ "Gods!" _ A roar to fill the room.  _ "Cunt!" _ Falling to whining, to mewling, to whimpers of self-pity. Pulling his stiff hand away from the damage, finally, he pushed it trembling into the floor, and then into his own hair to seize it fiercely.   
  
Breaths came ragged from his squirming body. He was humping air, part in the imitation of release, part to get some cool air over the angry flesh that only seemed to get hotter and hotter—his mind darted to the wash basin, to the damned ocean, or to grappling with Cobra to make him  _ take his fill _ indeed and share in a little of this torture. But leverage, leverage.   
  
"Cunt," he muttered again, thoroughly miserable, although there was at least a little humour in his slowly easing breaths. Releasing his hair, still feeling the ache in his scalp, he threw his arm back to clap his hand against the meat of the man's thigh. "Vicious little beast." A laugh, delirious, and a groan of complaint. "I've missed you like this."

 

COBRA -

 

A titter of laughter escape Cobra's lips as he realised that the man's  eagerness to rub the ginger infused oil onto his cock wasn't out of masochism, but sheer ignorance. He was already too distracted to have noticed the difference in the vials or smell it in the air. He wiped his hand unapologetically on the man's back, not wanting the oil anywhere near his own studded prick. He already knew the burn all too well.    
  
"Just one god here," Cobra purred, impervious to the man's insults. And one other, perhaps, but he was sleeping or whatever it was Keht did while Cobra had control. Somehow he doubted his antics would be interesting to an ancient being. Smirking, he reached down and took the clear vial this time, raising up on his knees and leaning against the man's hindquarters with his thighs and he indulged in spreading the scentless oil over his cock. A few drops spilled and splattered against the small of the blond's back. It reminded Cobra that one day he might take candle wax to the man's skin.    
  
He couldn't help but smile at the man's admission. He agreed with it; he had missed himself like this, too, when the world was simple and he was feared and powerful inside his cage instead of teetering on the precipice of being thrown into the big wide world, the knowable fathoms of the spirit realm.    
  
"Mutt," he replied simply, pushing the head of his cock against the man's barely-fingered asshole. "Why have you stopped stroking yourself? Are you ungrateful?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

_ Mutt. _ The name was almost holy, the way it prickled his skin and made him shiver. And didn’t it make a sort of fateful poetry, their coming together? The highest creature and the lowest one.   
  
The Northlander breathed a laugh that shook his body, half-hopeless, knowing full well the questions weren’t any sort of joke. His eyes were closed, tired of seeing anything but his lover, and his breaths crashed against the floor only to come back at his flushed cheeks. “No,” he said thinly. He rolled his shoulders, every muscle in his back, a futile effort to fight the strain of that biting fire and the taunt of Cobra’s prick nosing at him. He felt the broken flesh at his neck open and close again in his squirming. “Forgive me.”   
  
The last dash of his pretend-dignity was scattered to the winds as his cheek came to stone, his soldier’s body taking a posture as if his only design was to be fucked. One hand went to his long, loose hair; the other, a little reluctantly, at last found his prick again. A breath stalled in his lungs before he pushed it out. The impossible heat became all the  _ hotter _ with the warmth of his hand, tugging in long, slow strokes that worked the oil over raw skin and into his slit and had him cooing sweetly for it before long. It put a raggedness to his breaths. Goosebumps lifted on his pale flesh, and his nipples hardened without so much as the mercy of touch.   
  
Hunched over as he was, in a depraved sort of worship, his mind went to childhood—glimpses through the stands, wishing that body was over him like it was over him now. “Cobra,” he muttered, distant and wanting. Trying to put out of his mind Keht’s retelling; strange bruises, strange tents. A grunt. A furrowed brow. He rocked back again, his tight hole hungry,  _ greedy _ to be stuffed full. “My god-king, my love.” His oil-slicked fingers found his own heavy balls, treating them to a little of that fire. “Take your fill of me.”

 

COBRA -

 

Slow. Hot. Cobra's eyes faded closed as the head of his prick made it past that tight ring of muscle at roughly the same pace, enveloping the tip of his slick length in a heat he had experienced too long ago, now. Blind, he showed his teeth to the room as he felt Sigvard stroke his prick beneath him, listened to the sounds he made. Whimpers, gasps. With slow ceremony, the little deity moved his hands and curled his fingers around the meaty handholds of Sigvard's hip bones. Then, suddenly, he surged forward, burying his studded cock up to the hilt, if only to hear the man scream.   
  
Then gently, gently again; his chest flush against the man's broad back, he lapped delicately at the edges of the wound at his neck. The same coppery taste was sweeter now; or it may have simply been the sweetness of the friction as he rolled his hips against the blonde's thick arse. "Good boy," he cooed, tongue running  the taste of his blood over his lips before he planted a kiss on his ear.    
  
Up close, like this, he could barely pull out before he pushed back in, the result a hard but teasing friction that saw the man as full as possible. "Do you love the burn, Sigvard?" Cobra whispered cruel nothings in his lover's ear. "Are you happy?" 

 

SIGVARD -

 

All these little violences. The cut, the ginger, the sudden thrust that had threatened to tear him up. They left the Northlander’s body wracked with broken breaths, near-panting in the heat that flushed his skin to a slick and ruddy pink, shivering into the floor and endlessly grateful that there was at least that to hold him up. They hadn’t been like this before. Like dogs. He hadn’t yet learned the perfect pleasure of each one of a dozen barbells dragging over his prostate, gently,  _ gently _ , pulling shameless, mewling noises out of him with every roll of his hips. His free hand lifted, fingertips twining in Cobra’s hair, stroking and tugging at dark locks. Longer than he remembered.   
  
_ Are you happy? _ He held his breath to quiet himself and listen. The next exhale was a groan, wrapped up in self-pity at having to master language at a time like this. A quiet nod scraped his temple against stone. “Yes,” he croaked. Another halted breath. Another painful tumbling of words, this time in his mother tongue; pleading words, reverential words. Words for a son to his father, for a man to his god.

His hand made a fist in the southerner’s hair, then, and when Cobra next withdrew a precious inch from him, Sig’s hips rocked back to claim it. His ass pressed flush into the bones of the man’s pelvis, and he tightened his walls around his dusky girth—once, and again, and again, as if to milk him. A flood of impatience had him jerking himself in quick, short strokes until with a grunt he  _ stopped _ , abruptly, at the edge of that great cliff. Slower was better. A long, luxuriating touch. It was in this way he moved his hips: Rocking forward and back, slow, gentle, until he was fucking himself on Cobra’s prick in a rhythm that was close to  _ tantric _ after a long, long touch-starved month between them.   
  
“I do,” he breathed, finally finishing the thought he’d left half-complete. His mind seemed to find some footing again, and with it a tenuous grasp of the common tongue. “And you...?” Slivered eyes sought the space behind him for his godling’s face. Tracing the length of his own shaft with only fingertips, he took Cobra’s to the hilt again. “Do I please you...?”

 

COBRA -

 

The violence, it had never been  _ intimate _ like this, save for a smattering of night when he had been fresh in Hamad's attentions, who was skilled in fucking but not in having a spine. With ragged breaths, Cobra grabbed great handfuls of the man's hips but did nothing to stall their efforts as the bigger man so keenly fucked himself on his cock. Gasping with a sound that was almost like a laugh, he leaned into the direction his hair was tugged, placing another kiss on the coppery wound. Sigvard was happy; he had said so. "Good," he purred, fingers digging in harder. He had half a mind to keep thrusting as the blond paused on the cusp of rhythm but he was patient; he bided his time. Rewarded with a pulsing sheath for his cock that sent his eyelids flickering.   
  
"Yes," he responded, voice husky as his hips began to move again, faster now, filling the bedroom with the slap of flesh on flesh. Teeth closed on the shell of the man's ear, with a possessive, warning sort of pressure; no maliciousness, no more blood, not now. He broke away with a gasp for air from his exertions. "You're mine," he moaned faintly, mind beginning to slip a little more with each thrust. "Even when you are like a wild dog you will be mine, Sigvard."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander's mind was manic, caught between a dozen pleasures, and his body betrayed it; cooing nonsense, fists falling and knitting into nothingness, straps of thick muscle rolling with tension beneath pale skin. Low words in his ear. Possessive words. More than that—even in his animal state, he knew that it was  _ more _ , and so when he nodded fiercely and murmured his delirious approval, it was meant as a reassurance to his afflicted lover as much as it was the same-old song of fealty. Yes, he was his. "Always, always." He would follow. To be used or to be desperately needed, all the same.   
  
Low words, pretty words, just as soon fell away with the weight, the heat, the effort of Cobra's body against his own. He shook his head at nothing. In a trembling heap, groping for nearby cushions to pull close, to bite, to mewl into, he rocked back to chase each bruising thrust; to take more, to tighten his walls around the southerner's studded girth even as it made him mindless. His breath came rasping, ragged, cut through with soft moans and at last a mournful little howl when his calloused fingers curled around his prick again, greedy for more of that stinging fire, working it into his slit and down and down until it made his balls churn.

His lips parted, contorted. Reaching in silence for the names of all the old gods. With a heady, tortured gasp, he remembered: Only one, only one. "Cobra—" A prayer caught in his straining throat. Hamad's old words: Love made him a quickshot, or at least a month without touch and finally a frenetic and perfect mating on the floor. One hand pumped furiously at his cock, the other rocketed back to snatch at a hand on his hip. No, no; to the swell of the southerner's ass instead, pulling, desperate, clawing deep and painful.   
  
"Come." Staggered, the word was barely voiced; utterly unclear if it was a command or a warning. It didn't matter. He was lost to it. Pleasure hit him like a wall, and even the sting of the ginger couldn't bite through it now. "Come, come—Cobra, come." Rocking his hips, still, now frantic and clumsy. Milking himself boneless into a puddle on the floor.

 

COBRA -

 

The quickness of the word; the urgency, something in it sent a pang through him and the little god grit his teeth, huffing breaths moving back and forth in his throat as he strained to keep up that exquisite friction for as long as possible before he came with a yelp. It was a wounded and delighted sound all at the same time, all other sound eclipsed by the rush in his head, hips slowing to a feeble grind as though he were in a daze while his cock painted the insides of Sigvard's belly. His very breath seemed to stammer, vision blurring as the grip he had on the blond's meaty hips turned gentle, almost kind. He was dimly aware that he still hadn't inhaled when his eyelids slipped closed and his awareness moved forward into a different plane, one that was ethereal and surrounded by swirling sands.   
  
It was more pleasant, kneeling here, than the mud. He tipped his head forward and felt his forehead brush against the skin of what he realised was a shin bone. Cobra had been on his knees before men before; usually his face came level with their pricks or roundabouts. This leg, though; his head did not even reach its knee. Long fingers gently pressed against his head and stopped him from looking up but he did not feel threatened. Only calm; like the gently swirling sands.

_ Everything is moving again _ , Keht's voice soothed inside his head.  _ It will be time, soon. Go; all is well _ .   
  
He came-to a moment later, with no great gasp. The air simply... came into his throat again. He breathed deeply, slowly, still basking in the afterglow of a sexual haze. "Sigvard," he muttered, reaching forward for him now, pulling his length from his ass and crumpling to the ground next to him, cupping his face in his hands. He felt a pang of lament, now, when he saw the cut at his neck. He had gotten carried away again.   
  
"Does it hurt?" he cooed, kissing him on the mouth. "Are you angry?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Hard, cold stone had no forgiveness for Sigvard's wracked body, not like that touch did, not like that kiss; so he chased it hungrily, his tongue drawing the taste from Cobra's, his teeth catching at his plump lips. He'd heard his worry. He'd heard his slip of breath, too, but any white-hot fear that his godling might be stolen from him again was drowned by dizzying pleasure and gone with the murmuring of his name.   
  
His limbs were heavy and his joints were weak; still, he moved the whole of himself closer, propped on his elbow over the fretting thing and tangling his fingers among dark locks again. He shook his head at the question. In the space that was left by a wretched smile and rasping giggle at the back of his throat, his thumb played on the southerner's lips where his own had been. "It hurts and I am happy." A sweep of his hand over Cobra's ribs and a brief pinch at the skin there was somehow meant to prove the point. That wonderful delirium of pain. The cut, the bite. Didn't he know it...? He'd spare a dozen  _ goats _ and offer himself up on the altar.   
  
Quiet came. Only the sound of their breathing. There was the realization that it was past sunset, the way the night made those blue eyes colder. Pretty eyes, Irfan had said.

After a moment's lingering, Sig's own gaze went to the mess around them, the clutter of cushions, the heap of his own pants cut to tatters. He reached to snatch them up.  _ Pretty eyes. _ Pushing his lips to the brow above them, he did his best impression of gentleness in dragging the pants' thin fabric down the length of Cobra's stomach, into the dip of his navel, to the root of his cock and around the girth of it to wipe away the mess of oil and cum—even he couldn't smell it, now, without remembering his little master's disdain. His own prick, next, although the ginger had rawed his skin so fiercely that even fine fabric felt like pumice, and he swallowed a grunt in their next kiss. He was less careful with the crack of his ass, and in tossing the thing towards the terrace. Either a servant’s problem or tomorrow's.   
  
Heavy and weak. He fell a little ways further down, such that one couldn't breathe without feeling the other's body against him. "I will carry you when I have the strength to, little thing," he muttered. "To the baths, hm? Or to bed?" His arms came around him, only an impression of the act. "I want some time with you yet. Before tomorrow, before making ready to leave."

 

COBRA -

 

"I suppose I understand," Cobra said, sounding as though he was in a daze. He did, but only vaguely, as though he were witnessing the truth of it through a shroud. In the aftermath of his vision, he could only grasp at the edges of Sigvard's intricate relationship with pleasure and pain, with servitude. They were very different, in some ways. In some ways, Cobra knew only screaming fury. It could scare even himself in those moments.    
  
He yipped and shuddered as a cloth insolently touched his cum-sensitive prick, pressing his lips together in a grimace as he was delicately mopped up. He tolerated it even though he did not feel truly clean, too tired after the eye-opening events of the day to insist on his usual bathing ritual. In the morning, perhaps, when sleep had given him strength again.   
  
"To bed," he mumbled, pressing his face into the warm crook of Sigvard's arm and shoulder. "Sleep with me, away from the eyes of the witch. I am tired of... the eyes of the witch." His words trailed off as a gentle wave of sleep washed over him briefly, dragging his consciousness down. His soft body nuzzled up against the viking's as he closed his eyes, both fighting and yielding to it at the same time. "We'll be together in the sands," he whispered dreamily. "The desert is an old friend."

 

SIGVARD -

 

To bed. The answer put a sense of duty in Sigvard's bones, and strength followed in kind; between the little deity's slips of consciousness, the pale warrior had him cradled in his thick arms and hauled up for the long, long journey across the floor.   
  
All that was said of the witch and his eyes was a small grunt as his knees came slowly down among the cushions. Self-doubt complicated his face. It didn't matter. The door was locked, still, and now everyone was on whichever side of it they ought to be. As he laid Cobra gingerly in his bedding, he settled in behind him; his wide chest against his godling's back, his nose tucked in his hair. It couldn't have been a mistake. He breathed the scent of him. It would be their second night of peace for weeks and weeks and weeks—the second night after the shamans' coming. The raw wound was beginning to heal, and so it couldn't have been a mistake to summon Eilif and the Mother and their lot. Even if it was all madness since, it was at least the sort of madness he could make sense of.   
  
The wrinkle smoothed from his brow; he tugged Cobra's body closer, breathed deeper, as he listened to faint mutterings.   
  
A low hum in his chest was curious, if a little amused, at the thought of having affection for the endless and barren and miserably hot expanse of sand that had nearly killed him in getting here.  _ Friend. _ He would have gone for  _ rat prick _ , he thought, or  _ wretched fucking bastard _ . But then, he supposed, he'd often made friends of rat pricks and wretched bastards. And he'd never walked the sands under the favour and protection of a god. A smile touched the corners of his lips. They'd made a bond. He would be protected.

"So dream of it," he murmured, half-hopeless that his words would register before sleep claimed the little thing. "Hm?" Maybe his lips on the flesh behind Cobra's ear—and his teeth, then, tracing an echo of his own fresh knife-wound—maybe that would stir him. Just enough. "Dream of the desert." His wide palm washed over the back of that tan shoulder, as if to mimic the warm kiss of sun. "And what we'll make of it, you and I together there."

 


	17. Struck Blind

SIGVARD -

 

Their second night of peace. It was a miserably, wonderfully dreamless thing for the warrior; he couldn't remember drifting off, and now with sunlight prickling at his naked back, he could only recall properly  _ sleeping _ for an instant. Was that right? Was that the way it ordinarily went...? Head thick with the fog of waking, he couldn't be sure.

Shifting his weight, he was reminded of the way Cobra's body came against his own, soft and warm every place they connected. Separating felt cruel, like some kind of violence, but the maddening ache in his belly for a long-needed piss had him muttering quiet comforts to his lover and crawling out of bed all the same. So he had the use of his legs this morning. And, cooing softly now with the indulgence of filling the chamber pot, it occurred to him that there hadn't been those strange phantoms in the bed. The witches had not done some vigil in the night, then, and this came as some relief: The longer his mind was his own domain and not the shamans', not Keht's, the sharper he would be for the trek ahead. There would be arrangements to be made today. Preparations.

None so important as breakfast. Blissfully empty, now, there was nothing to do but fill up again; so, sinking his fingers to scratch at the depths of his beard, he padded to the door in hopes that the servants had left a generous meal.

There was the click of the latch, the creak of the hinges. And there were those eyes.

Sig had stooped to collect the platter before he saw her—that girlish thing across the hall with flaxen hair and  _ those eyes _ , those pretty Northern eyes. An apprentice. Standing to his full height, all questions in his face, he dwarfed her. She seemed to realize it. Her mouth opened and said nothing until she found the word for  _ beast _ in their homeland's tongue, not with accusation nor malice but a kind of simple naivety, as if she couldn't translate her thoughts to meaning. Another moment and she seemed to find her footing for a hushed and hasty message. Soft though her voice was, Cobra would have heard his name among the foreign sounds; and Sigvard's, and Eilif's, too.

He hadn't yet nodded, hadn't yet turned to rejoin his godling before the slip of her feet sounded away down the hall, quieter and quieter. The creak of the hinges, then, and the click of the latch. His gaze went first to Cobra, then to pick through the morsels on the tray as he brought it to the bedside.

"The witch woke in the night," he murmured, kneeling among the cushions and offering up the meal. "He has been asking after you and I. He wishes to speak before it is dark again. If you'd rather not, I can keep them away." Better to stop there, he thought, than to get carried away with violent promises about what might be done with those eyes that so exhausted his little master.

An uncertain hum seemed to catch in his throat as calloused fingers picked out a fat apricot for himself. "Yesterday—he wronged you, he upset you severely. Will you tell me...? What happened in that place? What is it he has done?"

 

COBRA -

 

The little deity gave a sleepy grunt as he was lifted, curling instinctively into the warmth of his lover's chest, letting out a grateful sigh as he felt the softness of his bedding beneath him instead of the cold, hard tile. He pressed back against the Northlander as he settled into the grooves of his body, groping sleepily for one of the man's hands and interlacing fingers with his own, bringing it round to his chest. His heartbeat was slow and steady now, just like the pace of marching through the desert. They would be taking a camel caravan along the coast road but still, so vividly, his mind recalled trekking through the red sands where time had no meaning. Keht's immortality made his time in the desert unfathomable. Cobra could recall his journey, too, even if much of it was spent whoring himself to merchants so they would do his bidding. 

He let out an inaudible purr at the husky voice in his ear, head turning in a vague attempt to nuzzle the man's soft lips. That was all that he did before sleep took him, soft but fast and all-encompassing. And then he did dream of the shifting sands; of distant, echoing winds and the slow and steady rhythm of trekking. He had a vague awarenesss of hair, long and streaming behind him, shifting just like the sands. Blue; it was blue, wasn't it, or was that just how it caught the light? At times it would stretch long and thin, clinging to a scalp with skin shrink-wrapped around the ridges of a skull. Other times it was lustrous, adorned with flowers. It rained. The moon shone. He could make out mountains in the distance, adorned with a single flickering light.

He awoke to the sound of echoing footsteps again, giving a sleep whine of complaint as pale skinned peeled away from his own. The sound of a foreign voice jerked him upright, bleary-eyed but staring no less suspiciously at the door, suspecting yet another witch to cross his threshold. None; just Sigvard and some food. He let his shoulders relax as he crawled closer to Sigvard's sitting place, reaching for some dried meat and grapes.

"Did he," he said, voice lacking a proper questioning tone. Of course he had; with the way the witch had behaved yesterday, how could he have possibly slept soundly? Cobra's expression soured even as sweet grape juice spread over his tongue. He swallowed before he answered. "I do not trust the witch," he said frankly, holding Sigvard's blue gaze as he shifted into a cross-legged position. "He was a stranger to me; completely, I am so sure I had never seen him before he came here. Yet after the visions, after... Keht let him into my memories, I think..." He shuddered with the discomfort of the idea. "I remember him now. From so many years ago; his face, his clothes, even, as same as he was when I came to in front of that accursed mirror. He touched something; made himself a part of my memories on a day that I hold..." The word 'sacred' stalled on the tip of his tongue. He ate another piece of meat quickly, looking away. 

"I would only share it with you and few others, that day," he glowered. "I do not want the witch back inside my mind. I believe Keht did not fully understand the workings of the ritual. Or at least, I hope not." He sighed. "... I will hear what he has to say, but I will not let him use the mirror again. If he wishes to speak to Keht, he can do it in some other way."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The southerner's explanation had the effect of slowing Sigvard's chewing, and of knitting a hundred little tensions into the muscles of his face. He was thinking. Obviously so. But although he knew little of the workings of magic and memory and visions and things, his expression was more of repugnance than of horror or cluelessness. He was reminded of his and Keht's first meeting at the bathside. That horrible perversion of memory, things he had never seen or heard now etched permanently into his brain, disfiguring once-happy nostalgia. These things were not the same, he knew. But he at least understood the terrible sense of  _ invasion _ that came with one's mind not being one's own.

So he grunted, nodding, gnawing at the apricot pit for the last of its flesh. "It is good to be wary of him," he agreed. His gaze hadn't wavered, even when Cobra's fled, and so he still watched his eyes like a promise. "I won't leave you alone with their lot again, just to be sure."

Plucking up some meat, now, and smearing the fruit juice from his beard—really, more mashing the stuff  _ into _ it—he let out a noise he hadn't entirely meant to, a quiet muttering that signalled his strain. There was more to be said. There was  _ 'that day' _ , of course, but he didn't imagine it was a happy one, and wasn't keen to start their morning with a miserable recounting of horrors. Something else.

"They are a strange people." Now his eyes did drop, ostensibly so that he could focus on tearing the meat to manageable pieces, though it certainly did seem to help with the strength of his voice. "They live in the mountains from childhood, away from everything else—they don't know how to talk, to drink, and these things. They are children in many ways, still, I think." Putting a sliver of jerky to his lips, he worried at it with his teeth, even as his stomach complained at the too-small meal. "But their intent—" He frowned in the strain of finding words. "I have seen them do great things. Things beyond imagining. Their work is ugly, but I trust that they will do good for you."

Still bowed over his meal like a starved dog, his eyes, at least, lifted to his companion's. "I summoned them because I believed this, and I believe it still. In the same way I now understand that Keht aims to protect you, where I was sure before that he meant to corrupt you forever. Do you understand?" If he didn't, at least the rest of the meat in his cheek was some consolation. "Will you trust me, at least, if you do not trust the witch?"

 

COBRA -

 

"It it not myself I have concern for," Cobra sighed, reaching for more grapes. "If Keht is controlling my body, what else might he show the witch? I don't believe he shares my suspicions; he is too old and too powerful to be afraid in the same way I feel fear." Fear; distrust. They might as well have been the same thing. The little deity chewed slowly, the conundrum weighing heavily on his mind. Still, though, he had to let out a gentle scoff at the talk of ugly work.

"I am no stranger to the benefits of ugly work, Sigvard," he chuckled, blue eyes crinkling at the corners. Even with the hardness of the memory, he could find some levity in it, now. A smile lingered on his lips as he gently hooked some of his slowly growing hair back behind his ear. "Of course I trust you," he said gently, voice growing serious again. "It is all these gods and witches who trouble me. I have never known many people I could trust, but I could  _ predict _ the actions of men easily enough. It seems everything grows less and less predictable every day."

Like children, then. Perhaps that was why they set his teeth on edge; Cobra had never felt like much of a child at all. In his earliest years he might have, but they were long ago eclipsed by the trauma of the circus. He could barely remember his mother's face, if at all.  Yet the rain and the mud was like a moving picture on the back of his eyelids.

A thought occurred to him.

"Have you seen it?" he asked, looking at the man imploringly. "While Keht had my body. Did he show you any of my memories, in the same way he showed the witch? There are... days I think you would prefer not to see."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Hearing Cobra speak of gods and witches and things, Sigvard crumpled where he sat in the sheer relief of it. So it wasn't just the heat, nor being so far away from home. There were laws of men here too, fraying at the edges, making it impossible to tell what came next, and even his little master could see it—he could  _ see it _ , and it seemed to make him just as miserable as it did the Northlander. He nodded fiercely in understanding, chewing at his jerky. Good. If they both understood the madness, they would at least have a chance of keeping each other sane.

The next question was less hopeful. So much for the thin peace of morning.

The warrior's lips went to a firm line, though his gaze didn't drop. Words would take some time. An answer wouldn't: His arms lifted in a hopeless ask for Cobra's body, and when he realized the tray of food between them would complicate the effort, he rocked forward to crawl to the little thing and haul him into his lap. A sigh seemed to be satisfied with this arrangement of their bodies, chest to chest, great white arms snaked around him.

"I have not seen the day the witch saw, I think," he muttered, voice low in the small space between them. "The first night, there were only my own memories, corrupted, and a vision of you and your father—you, coerced, given some potion and made to go into a tent I don't remember seeing as a boy." The last words had come in a rush, and now his skin went pink. "That's all. There have been other pieces... When I subdued him, I saw memories, but they were his, I think, and not yours." With a low grumble, he tightened his embrace and put his cheek to his lover's. "In Urd's tent, he said he would show me the light. I refused. I do not want him in my head unless you ask this of me, please."

It didn't matter. When he closed his eyes, as he did now, what could he do but imagine all sorts of horrors, thinking that one or the other might be what Cobra didn't want him to see...? "Do you want me to know it? That day, the one the witch touched, or any other. Do you want to tell me?"

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra's expression flickered with understanding as he cottoned onto the memories of the day Sigvard spoke of; when he was a boy, watching the show from underneath the stalls in the big tent, the one that charged only three coppers and was open to all ages. That, he could forgive. Those memories he could share easily. But others, of the time in the mud or the things he had experiences beyond the flaps of the night tent, they were more private. And the day he had in mind, years later and drenched in blood, was more sacred and more terrifying than all of those things and more. 

_ You will... know fear, I think. _ , Urd had said.

"... No, not other days," he said, face growing guarded. "I do not want you to be afraid of me again. These things I have done are atrocities. They change men." He thought briefly of Irfan, of how he responded to certain smells and sounds. The wall guards rarely saw bloodshed, and that was good, but what would happen once he joined them on their perilous journey?

"The day the witch saw, I mind less. You could ask Keht to show it to you, if you wish. There must be other ways to do it that do not use the mirror. I would like you to be by my side, in any case, if the witch intends to do more prying." His eyes narrowed as he finished off the last few morsels of his meal.

"Did the messenger say what the witch wanted?" he asked with a frown. What could have woken him that was so urgent now. "Or do we only know that he wishes to talk? I will go to him, if you come with me."

 

SIGVARD -

 

A library. It was only the second Sigvard had seen in his life, but it was easy enough to recognize—shelves going from floor to ceiling and heaping with scrolls and books and writing-tools. His nostrils flared at the sour smell of paper. It was dim here in spite of the morning sun, and there was a silence to it that seemed strange,  _ strange _ , although it must have been perfectly natural to be quiet as it was empty but for the two of them.

Three, then. He'd missed it. The witch was sat at a table some feet ahead and to the right of them, as good as a stone all slouched and swaddled in his cloak.

Something about him was strange like that silence. Even in the diffuse light that seemed to leave no room for shadow, there was a darkness in the hollows of his features, his cheeks and eyes and jaw. The girl had said he'd been sleepless. It would account for his grim look, Sig supposed, and his haggard posture, and the way the fingers of his left hand skimmed idly along the edge of an open scroll, back and forth, back and forth.

It wasn't until he felt the warmth of Cobra's body next to him that the warrior's skin prickled with goosebumps. He remembered the last time these two had been in each other's company. With a grunt, he stood between them, taking note of where each of his arms and legs were in case everything went upside-down again. "You sent for us," he announced, quickly realizing his voice was too large for the space and quieting, barely, for his next words. "The girl said I would find you here, but she would not tell me what the matter was. What's your game? What is it?"

The shaman's aimless fingertips had frozen in their place at the start. His gaze tracked the floor, frightful and sluggish with tiredness, coming right to their feet before hesitating, falling away, seeming to wander in aimless retreat back over stone tile. "Both?" He was thin-sounding, hoarse, as if from talking for hours. "The both of you?" 

The warrior's brow pinched. Exhaustion, was it, or delirium? Fists curled even as he explained: "The girl asked for both of us, yes, but if you want me to leave Cobra alone with you, you—"

"No." Eilif was a little softer, now, in voice and in features. It seemed to be some kind of relief, although his eyes never once lifted from the floor, the scroll, or his own hands in his lap. "No—I did ask for both, Sigvard and Cobra, I must speak with you both. It's good you've come. Thank you for coming. Tell me: Did you sleep well? Did you dream?"

 

COBRA -

 

He dressed in a saffron coverall as if out of spite, as if to defy the colour of the garment that he had chosen as being most like himself the day before. Never mind that it was the same soft fabric; the lurid colour stood out against the backdrop of books upon books upon scrolls upon shelves. Like all other kinds of wealth, Hamad's manor held many of them in its library, although Cobra, who could only read fragments at the best of times and usually only relating to poisons and recipes, wasn't a frequent visitor. His eyes narrowed as he saw the witch, feeling little pity for the sorry state he was in. His mind immediately wondered just what kind of mischief he was up to, what knowledge he sought.

"Perhaps he meant both Keht and I," he commented dryly, not bothering with any tact in keeping the suspicion to himself. He took a seat at the low table and leaned his elbows on it, keeping a wary gaze on the witch as he asked his question. He replied with a  gentle scoff.

"It seems I am always dreaming, these days," he said, shaking his head. A sigh. "Yes, I dreamed. Of sands, this time; of walking through seasons and eras of men yet time seems to pass as casually as a single day. It is not the first time I have had this kind of dream, I think, but it grows more and more clear each time I have it. Why?" The bite of suspicion was plain in the sharp question tacked onto the end of his answer. "What woke you in the night?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Silence closed in around the end of that question like a fog. The witch was hesitating. His eyes had found some place on the table to stare at, and his idle hand now fell to the edge of it to hold, or brace against, or some such thing; his breath was slow but shallow, his voice hushed. "A dream." His lips parted and stalled on the next thought for a beat of silence. "And Sigvard, child, you...?"

The soldier had come to sit so the table was beside him—so that he could get to his feet in an instant, and there would be no chance of being snuck up on. He grunted his denial and shook his head. "No. No sort of dreaming." When his glance to the shaman's face went unmet, he carried on investigating the stacks and stacks of scrolls. It struck him, as it had the first time, that it was a strange sort of idea to keep all these words in a place like this. If they didn't tell their stories to each other, wouldn't they forget?

Eilif seemed to draw further inward, then, pulling his hands to his lap. He dropped his gaze to them. In quietude, there was the sound and the movement of one picking at the other; blunt nails of his left scraped along the right's fingertips, his skin already red-raw. "I wanted to speak to you both," he murmured, "before you go off to do this thing in the Capital. To warn you?" He frowned, dissatisfied with the word. "Cobra, the mirror—"

The word was enough. Sigvard's eyes were on the little thing again, his shoulders squaring.

"The mirror," the witch went on, his hurried voice seeming to find some footing, "the mirror was meant to be protection. Yours and mine. But Keht was not accustomed to our magic—he asked me to do without." Ruddy fingertips now prodded at his other hand's fleshy palm. Once, and again, and again, all the while those nails dragged over them. Across the table, the pale warrior was watching, wary, curious, picking out the curl of the healer's shoulders and the attack of his hand. He recognized this mad fidgeting. He'd seen it muddy combat, on the faces of boys unfit to be men. He'd seen it in stunted deaf-mutes who went their whole lives without leaving their bedrooms. Something in their eyes.

Eilif's hands clasped to still themselves. "He is more powerful a thing than I have ever met, and so I thought if he meant no harm..." A shake of his head was meant to be words. His lids fell closed. "We did without. I saw into his eyes. And it was so much the same, but so much different to our magic; he was not accustomed to ours, and I was not accustomed to his. I understand now that great damage has been done. And I mean to tell you—I fear he cannot protect you, not in the way he seems to want to, not as long as he is without his amber. I did this thing with a touch, and he tired quickly. If I had had ill intent... If he is deceived, or subdued in some way... I fear for your spirit, and for your mind, and for those you keep close to you."

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra had a bad feeling; couldn't quite put his finger on it. Like Sigvard, too, the single word had him on the edge of his seat, limbs held rigid by the knots of his muscles, feet gnarled against the marble floor underneath them. He made a conscious effort to relax his clenched jaw but it was proving to be a chore. If Eilif had just come out and said it, maybe, just explained exactly what kind of omen he had seen, the little deity may have held back a fraction of his doubt and suspicion. Oh, how he hated when information was withheld like this, when punishments and consequences were dangled, unknown, over his head. It reminded him of too many horrible memories for there to be any chance of peace.

"The mirror," he muttered, agitated, parroting the witch's words. "What did you do? What did you both do, you and Keht, what plagues me know?" His teeth chattered briefly as he imagined invisible leeches sucking at his back or some other unspeakable horror from the realm of the gods. Of course, he felt a stirring within his mind then, exactly like an old god being roused from slumber. 

_ We walked through sands _ , the thought came almost sleepily. There was a vague attempt to take control that Cobra bit back with ease, his blue eyes boring into Eilif's tired face with increasing intensity.

"He's awake," he warned the witch sharply. "If you really think him so weak, why don't you--" His voice faltered as the pang of sorrow flooded through him, like a great wave washing up against the shore, with all the shock a splash of water might bring and twice the gravity pulling him down against the bench and marble floor. Slumping, he pounded both fists once on the table and pulled his head up, jaw clenched again. "Stop it," he snapped. It wasn't clear if he was scolding Eilif or the god within him.

_ I cannot protect you, _ Keht mourned.  _ It is true. There are many vessels I have failed to save. To love mortals is to suffer, and to feel their absence hurts just as much. I'll never be complete again. _

Cobra drew in a deep breath through his nose. "What is it that you fear?" he asked Eilif, leaning on his elbows heavily as his head swam with Keht's melancholy. "You're making him sad and strange. Is it the King? The Kingslave? What omen of danger did you see to be giving us these warnings now?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

_ He's awake _ . The warning seemed to make the air thick. The Northlander's skin flushed pink with the racing of his heart, and there was the threat of adrenaline making his muscles tight; a compulsion to act, to put an end to this, but it was useless, he was useless, in this realm of gods. So he only moved close to his lover. Like a shadow around him, he left his wide hand in the small of his back; his arm, too, on the table, his fingers waiting to catch Cobra's if they ever unwound from that fist.

His gaze had only left the shaman for an instant; now, returning, he saw a rigidness in his posture. His lips were in a grim line. Those picking hands had fled to hide among his cloak. But  _ still _ he wouldn't lift those eyes—those damned eyes—from where they were fixed on the table, and now he was trying to remember: hadn't both Cobra and Irfan noticed something unnatural in those eyes...?

Sigvard's voice was low, quiet, as if he might throw off some delicate balance otherwise. "Speak sense," he warned. "Go on."

Another beat of quiet came and went before Eilif nodded. "Forgive me. I'll tell you everything I know. Please—I'm only just beginning to understand it." His lips faltered on the next empty syllable. His cheeks were going ruddy. Was it that same adrenaline? "First, please, breathe shallow, both of you. Concentrate. Breath shallow and even; to breathe deeply and strangely is to draw the spirits in and give them power over your intent." He seemed to set the example, drawn into himself now, the muscles in his face relaxing and his cloaked body so much like a statue. "Concentrate, and remember your names, Cobra and Sigvard."

The stacks and stacks around them seemed to form an oppressive silence, crushing every echo. Sigvard heard the witch's next breath. Shallow and even.

"We do not deal in omens," Eilif explained, softly. "Prophecy, visions, these are the domains of your Keht—this is a magnitude of power we cannot hope to achieve, although centuries ago, when our people communed with yours and Olrun took the magic down from the mountains, we might have shared it." He shook his head. "I cannot see these things, Cobra, and I would not hide them from you if I did."

The shaman's eyes wandered back to the spot in front of him, where the scroll lay open, although he seemed to have no interest in it. He went on: "We deal in spirits; visiting with them, and knowing their whims, and what must be done to satisfy those that have become restless. In the spirits of men, we see their dreams and memories—we see these things through ritual, through vigils, and the mirror, always with intent. You must understand: I have dreamed a thousand dreams on behalf of other men, and I have walked a thousand memories that are not my own." Confusion knitted his brow again. "I know the feel of these things, the difference between them. Like fire and water. And it is always with intent, with ritual, but last night..."

Beneath that woad-stained cloak, there were signs of movement, sounds of fingernails dragging over skin again. It only lasted an instant; Eilif's expression went to one as though he'd betrayed himself, and his hands just as soon lifted to preoccupy themselves with something other than that slow self-destruction. Thin fingers wove together, falling as one to rest upon the scroll only to startle and lift again the moment paper and wood met flesh. He groped for the scroll's edge, rolled it, held it tight. 

"Last night..."

But now the warrior was only half-listening. Those eyes. That mad fidgeting he recognized from boys unfit to be men, from stunted children who went their whole lives without leaving their bedrooms. He understood it now. He understood it, and he didn't, all at once.

"There was no ritual, no vigil, no such thing; I only meant to rest. But in the night, I saw memories.  _ Memories _ , not dreams, I swear it, I know the feel of them." Like fire and water, he'd said. "And none of them mine. Yours, Cobra, a day in the mud that Keht showed to me. Others', too. I saw a goat, dead, a snake at its feet. I saw a homestead in the mountains coming into sight through the bush. I saw a ring..." His expression puzzled in quietude, as if trying to draw up more detail. "Turning 'round and 'round a finger. A desert woman below the deck of a ship. Lavender as far as I could see. Skins drying on a rack. A strange caravan half-tipped into a ditch. All memories, none of them mine." His face seemed to have lost colour. "Great damage has been done," he repeated. "You remember me, Cobra, when you shouldn't. I think—I think this must be something to do with the imbalance in the mountains. There is corruption there; madness in beasts and men has come like a plague. I told Keht this. It has been too long since we shared magic with the Urdai, and now there is an illness in the land."

Slowly, warily, Sigvard shook his head. "I was in the mountains for some years; I was not near men, but I saw no madness in the animals there. I saw no corruption, no plague like you say."

In the quiet, the shaman seemed to miss a breath, his gaze flicking only an inch in the direction of the warrior. "You did. You must have seen it, child, even if you didn't recognize it for what it was; it has touched everything." His shoulders curled and released, half-helpless. "I'm only just beginning to understand it. So I meant to warn you; if Keht cannot protect your memories from the likes of me, Cobra, I fear for him, and for you, and those you keep close, particularly in this time of imbalance. He must become stronger than this; his amber must be retrieved. He must be well-protected until then, and so must you be. I ask—" His grip tightened around the scroll. "I ask that Valdis and I, the two of us, might come with you to the Capital, or at least follow close behind. So that we can do what we can to keep you safe, and to understand this thing, so that at least one of us can return with some hope to heal our homeland."

 

COBRA -

 

obra breathed deeply, perhaps  _ too _ evenly; perhaps that was a warning sign, for while the witches did not deal in omens, Cobra certainly did, and he felt a deep sense of foreboding now that some of his darkest furies were about to be confirmed; that he had been cheated, that he had been stolen from. But just how such an act had come about, he could never have imagined. As the surreal reality was described to him, as the witch listed off the strange things he had seen, some of them close and intimate in Cobra's mind, others most certainly Keht's, and yet more still that he did not recognise, he felt a silent scream building inside him.

Eilif shouldn't have worried so much about Keht. It was Cobra that he should have been fearful of. Like a great storm cloud swelling to just the size of a man, the whites around those blue eyes bulged and invisible hooks drew up his shoulders, hands gripping the edge of the table as he bucked his lover's reassuring touch and began to climb onto the table's surface. He was still breathing deeply, still breathing evenly as he crawled across the table's surface and reached out for the scruff of the wretch's many cloaks, hauling him up and close so he could scrutinise him under his livid gaze. Head tilted back, he huffed out a laugh, fingers finding the man's thin shoulders through the fabric and squeezing tightly. 

"There are things," he ground out the words. Deep breaths, a small shake of laughter. It was funny just how easily his privacy and secrets were stripped away from him, time and time again. "Things so foul and sacred that not even a god and his disciple share between their bond." Even now he could smell it, of all things, in the back of his mind; the sour and coppery smell of spilled blood. "And yet  _ you _ ," the sneer was plain on his face, " _ You _ indulge a whim so recklessly and end up with passage into my mind!" Voice rising in volume, he shoved the witch back down into his seat, chest slowly rising and falling where he knelt on the table, drawing in slow breaths. Hands clenched into fists and then unclenched again, leaving behind half moon crescents in their wake. 

"You best find a way to stop it," he warned the boy; a boy, yes, for however mysterious he had seemed, how wretched was he now. "And if I find that you have trespassed me, or if this has all been some kind of trick, know that I will chew the tendons from your wrists right in front of your eyes." He swiveled at that, pushing himself down from the table and into the little aura of warmth that surrounded the ruddy-faced viking behind him. He indulged himself, pressing his cheek briefly to Sigvard's chest. 

"Of course, you will come," he added coldly, no warmth in his eyes as he looked over his shoulder now. "How could I do anything but keep you close now? But tread carefully, witch, for we travel along the edge of the desert, and the Urdai will walk with us. "

 

SIGVARD -

 

The rush of blood in the warrior's ears drowned out the creak of the table, the rattle of Cobra's laughter, the whisper of panicked breathing before the witch seemed to find strength enough to go back to that shallow, even pace. Those unnatural eyes had pinched closed, and his dark hair darted with the breath of the southerner's threats.

Sigvard was watching—eyes burning now from  _ watching _ —fixed in place, jaw set, hands balled to fists, fighting the instinct to tear the two apart with a fierce tension in body and mind alike. There was a sort of justice to it. Here was his lover's righteous retribution; here was just a flicker of the same power that would take him to godhood. But there was a sort of shame, too, as he saw the witch's lips contort for words before falling to a cowed silence.

Finally, a softer instinct: When Cobra's body came into his own, he folded his arms around him, making a throne of himself, a shield, a welcome fire in a cold night.

His own broad chest rose and fell just barely. Shallow and even; he'd taken the instruction to heart. It made his voice low and gentle, when he turned his mouth to his lover's dark curls. "I have questions for him." The hunt for answers had only turned up more and more. The madness in the mountains. What he'd seen in the night; the skins, the homestead, which could have been any good Northern man, but the woman on the ship...? His  _ eyes _ . And, like a long-ago memory now, his own wandering fate since failing the rite of the berserker. A dozen questions, and more and more every minute.

His next breath caught in his chest. "Would you like to leave this place?" His arms coiled tighter. "We will go, if you see fit." The witch, for his part, had remained where he fell on the floor, turning more and more inward. It might have been beyond hope already. "But I must ask him soon. And there are some you will not like, I think."

 

COBRA -

 

It was warm and good there in the space between Sigavard's arms and his chest. The little deity rolled his back in a half moon, feeling the bones of his neck stretch and shift. The tension and ache in his jaw and shoulders subsided slowly and he allowed his eyes briefly to close, though, hazy, they were pulled open again by Sigvard's insistence.

Of course there would be more questions. He couldn't deny him this; Sigvard was not the one he distrusted, after all. "No," he said, shaking his head at the notion of leaving. "Stay; ask your questions of him. If you really feel they will upset me, then let Keht hear them instead." He took a step back, then, pulling away from the man's embrace. He did not want the god to open his eyes in Sigvard's arms, after all; Keht had his own lovers to be concerned with. And there was jealousy, too; already it prickled on the back of his hands like they had been touched with coarse grass. Cobra had an inkling of what the man might be asking about and if he was right, then Sigvard was right; he would not like it.

Shaking his head, the steadily growing mop of raven locks blurring his visage for a moment, he lifted his arms above his head in a luxurious stretch and by the time his limbs were lowered, he carried himself in a different way again; Keht's way. Straighter posture with more of his weight shifted forward; the old god had never had a need to remain grounded and always poised to strike or flee. 

"I love secrets," Keht said with a fey grin. "Although I forget most of them. How funny, how funny that you can see my memories now, zealot. I don't think you will be able to make use of them without my amber, though. And you," he chuckled, lifting a limp hand to point at Sigvard. "He has your memories too, yes? He described things that are not Cobra's or mine."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The day would never come, Sigvard thought, when he would welcome the arrival of that ancient creature. He heard the change in his lover's voice. He caught his shifting posture in the corner of his eye. And then he was alone, alone with that  _ 'sad, strange' _ thing and the cowering witch.

Dread made his blood chilly. He curled his fingers to work the stiffness out.

In that crushing quiet, his blue eyes still leveled at the shaman across the table, he nodded his answer to Keht. "I think so," he murmured. Any doubt was withering now. Louder, to Eilif, he explained: "The southern girl you saw." A beat of silence. "On the ship." Another. Room enough for that feeble thing to at least  _ acknowledge _ him, even if he wouldn't explain. But that quiet went on and on and on, and so be it—he watched the man find a seam in the paper and pick at it until it frayed. He saw him close his eyes to nothingness, and heard him swallow with a thin noise of complaint.

One deep breath to muster strength was all the soldier would afford himself, and it was just as soon pushed through flared nostrils as he grunted in the effort of getting his hulking body to his feet. "I'm coming to where you are," he announced, and thankfully the little beast had no instinct for survival: He froze where he sat, ducking his head between curled shoulders and bracing in painful tension as if waiting for the axe to fall. He flinched once, severely, when Sigvard squatted behind him; twice again when the Northlander's fingertips came to those cloaked shoulders in gentle guidance.

Those eyes.

Those unnatural eyes. They'd fixed on him the night they'd met, and since then they'd been  _ strange _ , yes, strange, but always watchful—staring at the pair of them from the foot of the bed, inspecting Cobra's poisons, appraising the selection of his closet before that terrible ritual. Today was different. Today, there was that question,  _ 'both,' _ on their arrival. Today, that strange gaze had never once lifted to meet their own. Today, that wretched thing had been startled by the touch of the scroll that he'd seemed just then to be  _ staring _ at.

Sigvard had come to understand the reason for that mad fidgeting, and the hollows around his eyes. Those eyes. Unseeing. Like children broken on the battlefield. Like those deformed things who went their lives without leaving their beds.

"Come," he murmured. "Come up. You've lost your seat; I'll bring you to it." He felt the moment of uncertainty in that huddled body. He felt him release some of that stiffness, and, nodding, come to stand. With Sigvard a shadow behind him, he groped for his place as he'd once groped for that scroll on the table. Now the warrior wondered: If the witch was blind, what were the contents of that text? Irrelevant? A prop?

With the table to ground him, Eilif found a seat again; Sigvard soon after, close enough to hear his breathing, and to feel his warmth off of that woollen cloak.

"The girl you saw," he repeated. He saw it with every blink, now: Her dark stare in dim light. Like a cornered animal. "It would have been the day I met her. My cousin's ship—she was his thrall, then." Irrelevant. His heart was racing, and now his mind with it. It was harder and harder to breathe, shallow and even. "She would've—" There was nothing in Eilif's face that should have given him hope to go on. There was a tension in his jaw that seemed to bubble and fester. "She would have had something in her hands, something she protected. Tell me. Did you see it?"

That crushing quiet. The witch seemed to deflate in it, and Sigvard caught sight of those pale fingers finding each other once more in the folds of his cloak. A cracked noise, pleading, came through clenched teeth.

Harder and harder to breathe steady. Harder to keep his fist from snatching that wrist and putting an end to that mad fidgeting. "You must tell me," he hissed. "I must know. I must  _ know _ if it is mine, this memory, this thing you saw."

The beast's lips parted, his eyes searching the air ahead for escape. Pointless. He seemed to realize it, in time. "She held—" His shoulders curled. "She didn't." Brow twisted, helpless, he shook his head. "You mean to say she held herself...? Her swollen stomach. She protected her unborn child, then, is that what you ask?"

There was no air left in the warrior's lungs. He had understood his lover's lunge across the table, but he had not  _ understood _ it until this moment; and now it was all he could do to keep still. The question,  _ 'how,' _ was at first voiceless. Then, croaked: "What is it, this magic? Like the madness in the mountains, you said; how is it you are in my mind, and Cobra's, and Keht's?"

"I am not  _ in your mind! _ " Loud, much too loud for that quiet space. An echo down the hall sounded desperate, grieving. "I  _ saw _ these things, I do not see them still—I put an end to it! I woke and I put an end to it, I see nothing, I see nothing." Shivered breathing strained to keep itself throat-deep. "Keht." His head tilted, useless, in the direction of the old god. "Please. I didn't know what my touch would do." His body jerked as he picked, picked, picked at those troublesome fingers that had pushed into only the memory of dead flesh and now couldn't seem to be rid of it. "This is not our magic. I am sorry. I don't—I don't know what I'm meant to do. I have put an end to it. But I felt I must warn you. I don't have use for your amber, I swear it, but others... I only meant to warn you."

 

KEHT -

 

Such torment in these men. The old, old being inhabiting Cobra's flesh would be lying if he said that he felt their emotions, for neither of them were Urdai and neither of them were experiencing quite the same pain that Keht was so intimate with. He could recognise echoes of it, perhaps, in other things he had seen long ago, yet he could not recall precisely what those were. And the feelings paled in comparison to his hunger, his keen sense for blood that made him restless couple with a lonely, wandering melancholy. And all of it with none of the primal satisfaction that came with plunging one's feet into warm sand, to feel the ache in your calves and hear the whistle of the winds at your ears. His fingers rake through his hair again. Not nearly long enough.

He was already approaching the waif by the time he was called upon, though it was not in his head to punish nor accept apology. Rather, he reached out for his hands; bony and twisted with worry, and prised them apart, entwined the fingers with his own and pressed their palms together, looming over him as he pushed the hands back. Not enough to ache but enough to stop the picking, yes. "Do not taunt me with your blood," he whispered. "Because I will take it. I will not do it as spitefully as my vessel but I will take it nonetheless."

Blue eyes twinkled as they flicked towards Sigvard, a sly grin on his lips. "You were right to let me take him, for now," he purred. "He would not like this secret at all. He's always avoided women, particularly the ones who bear young. The scarring of seeing his mother and others at the circus, I think. We've seen a child cut from a belly. I don't recall if Cobra was there, but may be... may be..."

He kept his grip fast on the witch's hands as he glanced down at him again, finally acknowledging him beyond stilling his self mutilation.

"You have committed no crimes against me, pitiful thing," he murmured, blue eyes blinking like a bird's. "I am ancient, and the things I count as trespasses were written long before you and your kin existed. What does it matter that you have walked through my memories? The past cannot be changed. I know that very well." He made a noise close to a laugh in his throat as he finally released Eilif's hands. "And I will not know fear at the Capital, for the most that can be done to me has already been done. What's left to fear now? Let them try. Neither I nor my vessel are ever alone." 

Smiling now, he traced his own throat with his thumb. "Which reminds me," he glanced at Sigvard. "Northlander; Sigvard. Are you a jealous man? Could you suffer it if I left you, and took this body with me? I have business with my people. I have been trying to get away from quite some time, but Cobra... he is always with someone, or other times he has decided to go to Irfan or Hamad instead of the desert. I think I have been patient enough."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard's head had begun to feel thick. Heavy. Like breathing was somehow made more and more difficult with all these questions—more and more  _ questions _ , after all, when he'd only just been given answers. It was  _ her _ , then, that the witch had seen. The damned thing wouldn't or couldn't say how, but he'd had some seedling of a theory about this and the mountains' madness, hadn't he, and what was his thinking there? And all this, all this about putting an end to seeing. Even the brute knew he didn't speak literally; it had nothing to do with his sudden blindness, and yet everything to do with it, but  _ how _ ...?

His lips had parted to frame the word again. What had he done to stop the visions? Some ritual, a sacrifice, a tonic? Was it a permanent measure, or only for a time? What did this mean for the rest of his strange magics?

As he choked on a dozen words, he heard his name. Blue eyes, wrought with confusion under a furrowed brow, wandered from Eilif's body, where the shaman had turned inward, breathing shallow, breathing even, nodding along to the old god's words and pushing his fists into his lap. Instead, the warrior looked to Keht.

Business in the desert. No, no: Sigvard had questions,  _ questions _ for the little beast in the woad cloak; it was why he was still here in this dreadful library, why Cobra had permitted Keht to come and protect him from these secrets. He had questions, and he'd only managed two, and now he felt his chance slipping like sand from his fist.

The desert. He shook his head, faintly. "I cannot leave him. I will not leave him—you must know I will not leave his side until the death of me." What an old memory, jealousy; what a strange idea. This was something else. "Please. He gave you this body so that he would not have to hear my questions, and that is all; he said nothing of letting you go into the desert." Again, he shook his head, firmer now. "He was furious when you went, last. He was betrayed." It was too easy to imagine his godling waking suddenly in that strange place, confused and terrified and seething. "Put the question to him, not to me, or—or I can try to convince him, if there is something you must do there. But please let him go of his own accord."

 

KEHT -

 

His birdlike curiousity continued even after he released Eiliff's hands; picking through a few locks of his hair as though it might part and show whatever spell was used to take away his sight. Keht didn't know these things; the only way he knew was a dagger, or sharp talons (his nails were so blunt, now) but that was much more dire and far easier to spot. He did not know if the blindness was permanent, either, but surely it didn't matter, in the old god's reckoning. As a witch, the waif dealt mostly in visions that did not require sight on the mortal plane. Trivial, trivial, things.

His hands stopped at Sigvard's refusal to comply. His lips pressed into a hard line as he came to terms with the knowledge that he would still be waiting, waiting again. "You don't know what you refuse me," he said, sounding cold. It was a difficult mood to maintain at length; he was not entirely sure of what he was being denied, himself. Yet he knew his urges, and he knew the face of Urd, the feeling of hands at his throat no matter what vessel he was in. Surely such things were of importance.

"I won't stop trying," he informed the viking coolly. "You will not begrudge me that. But I can wait, longer than any of you can. When my memories are returned to me, my will will not be denied."

He raised his eyebrows at the later part of Sigvard's plea. "We cannot speak to each other so frankly," he explained, shaking his head. "I have been trying, too, but it is difficult. Many times he will not look up to my face or when he does, it is beyond his comprehension for I am not able to fully comprehend it myself, you see. The man in the desert, he sees me," he added, not without a hint of bitterness in his tone. Yet another reason he knew he should go to him. He looked down at the witch thoughtfully.

"You don't see anything now," he murmured, tapping on his scalp. "But did you see me, in our time in the mirror? ' _ Speak your name _ ', I remember that part, but was I seen? Who will see me now, now that I have no body?" A little laugh. A bigger laugh; he slumped down to the floor to join Eilif there, wallowing in the mix of self pity and despair that the waif had brewing. 

"Ask your questions, then," he waved a hand at Sigvard with a grimace. "Drain the waif. There's been too much confusion of late for me to stop such talk now."

 

EILIF -

 

Keht's voice came from the blackness and numbed the witch's skin.

Confusion, yes—the land was confused, and the people, and it seemed to Eilif that the whole world now hung in some terrible, tenuous balance. He was only just beginning to understand it. All these questions, all these things he was meant to answer for, but he was only just  _ beginning _ , and he was so terribly tired, and his body was wracked, and there was a pressure in his skull that was mounting and mounting and impossibly mounting.

_ Speak your name _ .

In his mind's eye, he saw it. It couldn't be helped; the mere suggestion was enough, and at least he could forget that strange woman, eyes like a cornered animal's, for a little while. So he saw it: The hair, the scream, the strange body dripping pitch. In time, he nodded, whispering in all that quiet: "I saw you." It was dark and fleeting, but it hardly made a difference; all the light and the time in the world wouldn't have given him the words to describe it. "Pieces of you, pieces," murmuring, hands roaming ahead of him, finding cracks in the stone. "You're in pieces still. We must find your amber." Sad and strange. He sounded so sure, now, fearless and ancient, but he'd sounded that way in front of the mirror, and then what had Eilif done...?

"This." The warrior's voice to his left. His head turned towards it, damned instinct, only to feel thick fingertips prod at the flesh around his eye. “You put a stop to those visions, you said, and then there was this?” He was agitated, audibly, and withdrew his hand in a flash. “You have been in my mind and in Cobra’s. Whatever afflicts you—will it afflict us, too?”

He shook his head thinly. Whole seconds between breathing now.

A grunt signalled the child’s dissatisfaction. “How do you know, witch? How can you be sure?”

Eilif pressed his eyes closed in some delusional hope that it might soften the edge of voices in this place. In his mind’s eye, he saw his aching skull split open, cleaved through, spilling meat and bone into his lap. He swallowed, his tongue thick and dry. “It is my Calling. You know of this thing, yes? The disease that first draws us to the mountains as children.”

The warrior, in his usual way, rumbled his wordless acknowledgement. He seemed to speak to Keht, then: “An infant in the village will get sick. Medicine does not help her. So the shamans will be summoned, and they will see the magic in her—they will call her witch and take her to the mountains to live among them.”

“The illness comes,” Eilif nodded, “because we are gifted with the mountains' magic—and so our spirits are desperate to speak to us, but we have not been taught to listen. We become unnatural, diseased. It is like this in the villages and among the nomads too. All who draw life from the mountains.” Fingers twisted into his cloak, pulling it tightly around himself. “I was a child among the goatherds in the foothills. One night, there was a fever.” A headache. A feeling of thorns in his guts. Easy to remember, now they’d returned. “The blindness followed. For some weeks it was like this, and then Valdis came for me. She bled the fever out and taught me to commune with my soul.” Quiet. Shallow, shallow breathing. To breathe deeply and strangely was to draw the spirits in. "I woke, I understood what happened, and I felt the only sure way to put an end to it was to sever ties to my spirit. I did it in ritual. It is desperate to speak, but I do not listen. So the illness has come again. It is mine only. It will not come for you and Cobra."

This, at least, had the effect of silencing the warrior beside him. He heard him push his hulking body to his feet, and wander a little ways away—and if he listened carefully, he thought, he could even hear him  _ think _ .

No matter. The barbarian was more questions than answers, at least for the time being; no help in understanding. He needed to understand. He needed to work it out, to investigate, but all the scrolls in the world would be of no use to him now. “Keht.” There was a curiosity in the name, but a morbid one. “You have called me zealot.” He needed to understand: Had this madness of memory begun with the mirror, or sometime before? Cobra had said he remembered him. The old god had said something like that, too. “Why?” He pulled his cloak tighter around his fevered body. “What is he? That man I remind you of.”

 

KEHT -

 

Just as Eilif saw a vision despite all his blindness, so too did Keht; a single tap of a sandal underscoring the booming echo of ethereal bellow,  _ speak your name _ .

A smiling, curious child. Just a flash.  _ I don't have one _ .

The old god sighed, the warmth of the memory ebbing away no matter how hard he tried to hold on to it. As though it were made of desert sands. "Pieces," he agreed softly, leaning back against the side of the library table where he sat upon the floor. "Pieces, how fitting."

The creature frowned as he listened to the Northern men speak of their ways. "I don't..." he grimaced, doubting himself for a moment. It was difficult to say with certainty. "I don't remember any mortals in my domain having such an affliction. There are none among the Urdai who use magic, only those who have visions and even then," he chuckled. "Cactus juice and other such things. Cobra, he knows more of it than I."

The talk of goatheards caught his attention. He was more interested in them than other factions of people from the North, after all. He had met many of them, both before and after the time of vessels. He still felt the emptiness around his third finger, where a ring had once been. "Magic users come from goatherds?" he asked, looking more closely at the waif's face. He would be lying if he said he could tell the man's people just by the shape of his face. While it was easy for him to distinguish the Urdai and their closely related tribes among the desert people, easier still to tell them apart from the Navanese and the fire worshippers in the Capital; all the Northlanders seemed to blur together into the same, pale face. They were not his people, after all. Besides, the man who gave him the ring would be long dead by now.

"You should undo it," he advised. "In secret, if you have to, to save you from Cobra's venom. But you should undo it if it causes you this pain. Terrible things happen when human bodies are forced too much to do things which are unnatural. I have seen it." On the circus stage, in the night tent, in the mud. In the halls of the brothel. 

The zealot was more pleasant to think about than these things; at least, what fleeting shreds of him Keht had left. "The zealot, yes," the old creature nodded slowly, shifting to sit cross-legged. "That was a very long time ago, at the end of an age where I was sleeping, I think. He came to me at the place where I was born, where the rock was smooth..." he trailed his hands over his thigh thoughtfully. Memories of touch and sound helped to shape the events from so long ago. "But he is dead, now," he said, the whimsy fading from his eyes. "He was a mortal man. You could not possibly be him. I merely saw an echo of him in you, the same kind of fervor for the world of gods and old creatures that i have seen in few others since. I miss him," he sighed, tracing his fingers along his throat. They idled there for a moment, squeezing lightly, before he glanced at the barbarian looming over them.

"I should give this body back to him," he mused, speaking of Cobra. "Have you more questions for the waif? Or shall I sleep again? Your body is too big for me to make it to the desert tents, after all."

 

EILIF -

 

Of course there would be venom. Eilif shook his head at the god’s direction, even now bracing for the sting. “I will not undo it.” There would be venom all the same. “If this is the same madness as in the mountains, I cannot risk undoing it. I can manage the illness. With Valdis to help me.” Quiet, shallow breathing. Thinking less of who the zealot was than how Keht described him now. The place where he was born. Questions, questions—but there had been enough for now. He wanted to sleep again.

“You think I would stop you?” The warrior’s voice came nearer and nearer. “No. You broke my mind the last time I laid hands on you.” Strong hands came suddenly from the darkness, thrusting under his arms and hauling him to his feet. Dizzy, gasping, he clung to them in backwards instinct while every other part of him told him to run. “Besides, we are not enemies, you and I. You protect him—so I will help you when I can, but only if he permits it.” Those hands seemed to hesitate. And then a squeeze, and a yank, and the world went upside-down.

“What—?” A shoulder digging into his abdomen crushed the air out. He was draped over it like a sack of flour, his fingers struggling to find purchase on the meat of the body below him in order to push himself  _ upright _ , at least. “What is this? What do you mean to do?”

The shoulder rolled beneath him. “You are blind. I will take you to your rooms. Or to a guard who will do it. You—” Speaking to Keht, judging by the swing of his body. “I will tell him you must go to the tents. I will do this for you, and see what he says. I am done with my questions for now; will you give him back to me? Gently, if you can.”

 

KEHT -

 

More blinking, blue eyes somehow gaining the quality of a bird's. Beady. "Humans are strange," the spirit said, seemingly unaffected by the irony of saying those words from human lips. "You seems determined to suffer as the gods do when you have the choice to simply enjoy the thrill of being. You make so much trouble for yourselves. So be it."

He tilted his head to one side as he regarded the largest northlander, foggy memories of his interference with Sigvard's mind coming to him. He responded with a hum, showing no signs of remorse. It was enough, to creature like Keht, that he didn't do it again. A mercy. Yes... something like that. His gaze turned withering as he watched the blond haul the witch up like a sack of potatoes.

"The blind can see, you know," he pointed out. "With their hands, with their ears. He won't like you touching him." He spoke of course, of Cobra. No awakening could be gentle with such a sight to behold. But Keht supposed this was just more mortal self-made suffering, and he was content to turn in a circle and yield control of his vessel back to its rightful owner. The return to normal posture was apparent; Cobra flexed his fingers and looked around quickly as if there might be targets to strike. As predicted, his nose wrinkled when he saw Eiliff being carried.

"Did you get the answers you were looking for?" he asked Sigvard dryly. "Or are we taking the witch to the hangman's block?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Vicious little beast. Even his scowl was a welcome sight, more welcome than he knew, and so Sigvard grinned wide. New warmth came to his plumped cheeks, and to the rest of him, too. Still, he stayed where he was. Better to keep the witch away from his master's reach.

"We're taking him to his rooms," he murmured, low and even, as if he had any hope of keeping the peace if Cobra decided this wasn't the time or the place for it. "He's put an end to the memories that came to him in the night, he says, by putting an end to all his magics—but it's made him ill. He is blind." Remembering Keht's words, he grunted: "Freshly. I don't think he'd manage his way on his own."

The body over his shoulder had gone dead-still. He hauled it up again to leave the weight higher on his shoulder. Lofting his brows towards his lover in curiousness, he let his smile fade to something earnest. "Would you like me to kill him instead, little thing?" His grip tightened, though Eilif didn't yet move. "I would do it."

 

COBRA -

 

Blind? Cobra's steps faltered, regarding the waif with a disturbed expression that thankfully wasn't seen. An 'end to it' indeed. A chill ran through him at the thought of blindness, and it would brew into anger, if only Sigvard hadn't shocked him so with what he said next.

_ I would do it _ .

The shock on the slave's face was clear. For the viking to be so earnest when he said it, too. Cobra had numbed himself to the viciousness of his own statements long, long ago. All this talk of eating meat from bones (although those claims carried more weight now, with Keht inside him) when in reality his fury was far more likely to culminate in a heinous night of poisoning followed by social isolation. What was he to dispense punishment and tread amongst divinity? The first time he had done it, he had left scars deep in the minds of friends and enemies alike. Hamad feared him but so did Irfan, however much he might claim to. And that sort of thing would leave him alone; terribly, irreversibly.

"...No," he said, voice softer than he would have like. "Do not kill him. He is... stupid, yes,  but that's not a crime worth killing over. And he could still be useful to me." A cloud of self doubt hung over him even as he said the words. His tongue was so much less whip-like now that he considered things beyond his initial anger. His followers.

"... Let him down, please. I will do it. I will lead him."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The decline of his offer came as no real surprise to Sigvard. Granted, he wouldn’t have been much taken aback if Cobra had asked him to wring the shaman out right there on the floor, either: In his country, stupidity was as good a reason as any to die, and he couldn’t be sure that Eilif’s transgressions were limited to just that.

Still. By the little grin on his face, he  _ enjoyed _ this, this act of mercy. Humility was handsome on his lover, and that he could still surprise him—or horrify him, as the case may be—gave him a nauseating sort of thrill. He grunted, bent, set the feeble thing down. One hand took the shaman’s wrist and thrust it out for Cobra to take. The other clapped the southerner square on his back. “Good.” Those packed shelves stole the boom from his voice. “You are fair; you’re generous.”

The Northlander kept their bodies close enough to share warmth, even as they entered the hall, and watched his lover’s face. A low, undecided rumble never left his throat. “Keht—he wanted to go to the desert while he had you. I wouldn’t permit it unless you agreed; I  _ will _ not permit it unless you agree.” There was no need to tell him that there was no such thing as  _ permitting _ when it came to the ancient thing, and how he’d been near-pleading. “But you should know he wants to go. In case he tries to trick you or some such thing.”

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra glowered in response to Sigvard's grin. Something about the pleasure he took in this rubbed the little deity the wrong way. "Am I?" he asked, reaching out to grip the witch's wrist with one hand as he took his jaw in the other. His tanned fingers squeezed his cheeks enough to make his lips curl and expose his teeth. He scoffed as he observed the blind man's behaviour, still finding it hard to believe that Eiliff had gone so far as to blind himself. It wasn't generosity that he felt in his heart, then. Not sympathy or pity, either. Releasing Eiliff's jaw, he struck him across the cheek, hard enough to turn his head.

"It is a stupid thing that you have done," he said coldly. "But if it stops you prying in my hallowed memories, then so be it. I will tolerate you." This seemed to be as much as the furious slave was willing to engage with his captive before he was hauling  him down the hall in the direction of the rooms where Hamad had (or had not, who cared; not Cobra) permitted the foreigners to stay. Cobra gave an unkind chuckle as he listened to Sigvard speak, the wheels turning in his mind as he walked.

"Did he, now?" he muttered, eyes narrowed. "I wonder why." Keht had done nothing so far to prove a threat, but still... the slave was not inclined to trust people. It was clear in the way that he treated Eiliff now. In the pit of him, his darkest suspicion was that Keht would find a way to take control of his body permanently, instead of coexisting. "Did he say why?" he asked. "I am not inclined to let him take my body off into the sands without knowing what he intends to do. It's so difficult to speak to him. I see his feet, I think, in my dreams." Another furtive glance at the waif staggering behind him.

"I don't suppose there's some mirror or other that could let me see him," he said loudly, addressing Eilif once more. "Or is this beyond your magical knowledge?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

"He didn't." The Northlander's voice was low, preoccupied with watching Cobra, watching Eilif, and their strange dance down the hall. There was no rhythm to the witch's shuffled, stumbling footfalls trying to keep pace with the slave's swift step. "The way he looked..." Grunting, he lifted his calloused fingertips to touch at his own throat. "To do this thing, maybe. The throttling. Or to eat again. I can't be sure."

The witch, for his part, was not so ready with his answer—his lips parted, but offered nothing. Fear was plain on his face. His blindness had made him shit at masking what was in his heart, Sigvard thought; or else the slave's threats and violences had begun to cut to bone. No matter. In the same moment the warrior had lifted his arm to give him a little tug or a shove to remind him of his senses, words tumbled from the shaman, without rhythm, like his tripping feet.

"You could do it," he rushed, "you could do it, in the mirror, just the same as we did before. He speaks to you already. You said he was sad and strange; he speaks to you already, so it's only a matter of listening." His words had about as much breath as they did sense; he'd gasped at the slap, and struggled since for air. "But it is not an easy thing." Fragments at a time, now. "Easier with his amber, I think." Breathless silence between. "But he will have power then. If you—"  _ Shallow and even _ , Sigvard remembered, and felt his own chest tighten in instinct as Eilif prattled on. "If you like, we should do it now, soon, while you are strong enough to master him." Here was the first sign of resistance, those stumbling heels trying and failing to dig into stone tile beneath. "Slow—slow, please, I beg of you, Cobra, I must keep my breathing even or it will all be undone. Please."

 

COBRA -

 

A soft huff of laughter came from the deity's lips as he watched SIgvard make the vague, throttling gesture. He could almost recall, himself, the night he had been left alone and had the vision of the terrible tree carved into human skin... when his own throat had turned black and blue. it occurred to him, then, that his visions had been few and far between since had become aware of Keht. He cast a wary eye on EIliff, recalling what he said about the perils of not talking to spirits. That set him on edge.

"No mirrors," he muttered quickly, vexed. With a reluctant huff, he let the shaman's wrist free so he could stop and slow his breath. "Fine, fine. Go slow, then, but no mirrors. That damned mirror is what caused this mess now." Resisting the urge to flick the witch on the nose just because he could, he grit his teeth and turned away, pacing like an antsy dog.

"I want the amber," he muttered. "I am tired of this. I want to be free of it. But does the amber mean I will be free of it? That is the question." He glanced between the two men, pressing his lips together. "The caravan will be ready to leave tomorrow morning," he pointed out. "Perhaps we could go to them, the Urdai, and tell them we will be moving towards the Capital soon. You with me, Sigvard. You..." he gave the waif a somewhat disparaging look. "I doubt you could even make it through the sand. Could you behave yourself amongst the Urdai, or would there be more tricks?"

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

It was a strange scene: One little thing pacing in frenetic energy, the other backing himself against a wall and going as still as stone. Sigvard minded Eilif, first, watching the flush fade from his skin and his chest settle into a gentle rise and fall. His eyes turned to his godling's at the word  _ tomorrow _ . The idea didn't seem to hold any meaning to the warrior, going by his look; he was far too preoccupied with all the tensions in his lover's face, and his voice, and his body. A terrible burden. Too much for one man. He remembered, with some amusement, how the peyote had made him feel like he could heal it all.

At last, he was tugged out of his own mind by the witch, who spoke dimly from his place as a statue on the wall. "I will survive the journey to the Capital if Valdis is there to guide me." Even here, Sigvard could see the muscles of his jaw tighten and release. "My people have love for the Urdai. I wouldn't mislead them. I have been naive, Cobra, but I have not misled you, either."

There; an answer. Sigvard stepped close to the southerner—no accident that it put him between the men—and knocked at his fingertips with his own in an offer of intimacy he didn't expect him to take. "The night we went to the tents." His voice was hushed, meant for Cobra only, but privacy was impossible in this space. "Keht..." Hesitation wrinkled his brow. He didn't yet know where to put his faith. "If he is whole again, he said, he could leave your body for another's." Blue eyes fell to study his lover's face. "I don't know if he can be believed. He has not lied yet, I think, but then neither has the witch." A thin noise in his throat signalled his indecision. "We should go to the Urdai, yes. But if Urd tries to lay hands on you again...? What would you have me do?"

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra shook his head; a pointless gesture, as Eiliff couldn't see it, but he did it all the same. "I speak not of the journey to the Capital. We can bundle you up and throw you in the back of the caravan if need be. I speak of now, to walk outside the city walls and trek through the sands to the Urdai encampment. Can you do it, or will you fall? Sigvard will not be able to carry you on the dunes. He doesn't have the legs for sand." 

He glanced at his follower, not without a glimmer of amusement. It wasn't Sigvard's fault for being born in the North. Cobra had been, too, although his Urdai blood was kind to him. Though he didn't let it change the expression on his face, his hand took Sig's when offered, fingers curling closed to feel the warmth. "... Did he, now," he murmured. There was no way of telling if it was true or not, but if Keht really was as powerful as he seemed (when complete, anyway) then it stood to reason that he could take his own form. But it was hard, still, to let go of the doubt that plagued him. He'd been hurt too many times to fall so easily to whimsical trust now.

"I don't fear Urd," he sighed, shaking his head. "I don't think the choking is for me, either. How could it be a tradition if it were for me? It is Keht, who he chokes. You can stay with me and we will go and tell him our plans, but there need be no touching between us. Urd may be the chief of my mother's people, but he is almost a stranger to me. They gave me water in the desert, that is all. Even then, I suspect Urd knew the spirit I carried, even if I wasn't aware of it myself." He frowned with some of the distant memories of his trek down from the Northlands. Some vague memories of intimacy that might have made Sigvard jealous but then again, perhaps not; he'd been touched by Hamad in front of him, after all. Had Keht been influencing his behaviour, even then? It seemed likely. Why else would he have allowed himself to be touched, when he had already been watered and fed? It wasn't in exchange for anything. It wasn't an arrangement, like his slavery.

He scoffed with the realisation. "He loves him," he said, the words close to disparaging. Cobra wasn't known for his empathy. "That must be why he wants to see him. What would such an ancient god want with any man?" His nose wrinkled. It felt weak when held up against his own ideas about the old gods. Wrong, somehow. "Come. We shall go ask. You, witch, are you coming?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

_ Love. _ Sigvard regarded his own little god beside him, not quite so ancient. The curl on his lip and squint in his eyes betrayed curiosity, or skepticism, or disdain, or all three—Keht had said some funny things about love and lovers, backwards things, and the warrior wasn't convinced the old creature fully grasped the idea of it. "Maybe," he nodded, all the same. Urd would have a better idea, he thought; the prophet's answers always seemed half-complete, same as he was, without his amber.

The witch, after a moment's hesitation, shook his head. "I would be a distraction," he answered softly. "But later—I would like to meet him later. Will you ask him if he will see me tonight, if I go to him?" Aimless eyes implored the ground at their feet. "I will find some way."

A thoughtful noise from the towering Northlander was neither here nor there. "We will see." Fingers still twined in Cobra's, he lifted his arm to circle his shoulders and tug him close. To Eilif: "If you keep still, here, I'll send a guard for you."

~~~

The dry heat of the noon-day sun was oppressive, and seemed only to  _ strengthen _ under Sigvard's unhappy, squinting watch. "Balls," he muttered. Only seconds from Navan's gate, the sand had already begun to suck at his feet; it would take him some days to learn how to walk properly in this place, and when they reached the stone roads of the Capital, likely only seconds to forget. For now, he freed his arms from Cobra to keep balance at his sides. Easier, at least, when he wasn't rushing after the surly thing.

Watching the horizon, he caught the light off distant tents, or at least the lingering glimmer of having stared at the sun. Too far, still, to catch the scent of goat. "Your mother's people," he muttered, half to himself. Gods, he felt the water  _ wrung _ from him here, and it was only minutes to the coast. He cast a sidelong glance to his little master, blanketed by his shadow. "Did you ever know her?"

 

COBRA -

 

"Alone?" Cobra scoffed. He didn't much like the idea of it, but still, what could Eiliff do in his current state? As much as he suspected the witch of some kind of wrongdoing, it was vastly outweighed by his confidence in the old chief of the Urdai. He and Sigvard, even Keht, in his crippled state, may have been fooled, but the little deity supremely doubted that Urd would slip so easily. Yes; Urd would be fine whatever he faced, he was sure of it. "Very well," the slave tossed his head. "Just have one of your kin guide you, otherwise you will be lost to the sands and die. The dunes are no place for Northlanders, let alone blind ones."

The dunes, oh yes, the dunes; they were a place for him, though. Already he found himself yearning for it, in a way, to plunge his feet into warm sand and feel the wind steal the breath from his throat as he walked. Dry heat was good heat, but no amount of dryness would stop a heavyset man from sweating, and it was here SIgvard found a misery that Cobra did not share. He tried not to laugh at him, at least; a kindness. It was easier when the blond brought up such a serious matter. He turned his head to him serenely, not smiling but with a ghost of a smile in the black of his eyes. Distant.

"Too young," he said, looking away again. "Too young to know her in any way more than a young child knows his mother. Do you know what a circus does to a woman, Sigvard?" His words were slow, matching the pace of their trekking. "It breaks them in ways that men can't be broken. They put another baby inside her; I know that now. She died. Too dangerous to have women in the night tent. Or perhaps it was my father. It doesn't matter." Even the word alone put a bitter taste in his mouth. 

"That is one of many reasons why I burned them all." He spoke softly, but not so quiet that the wind stole his words. "I'm not sorry. My atrocities are within reason. You understand, don't you?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

The southerner's telling of the circus was crude and grisly and more than enough to get the idea across. Sigvard grunted. He didn't know. He'd been naive, in boyhood, but it had been years and years since then—and with nothing but sand to look at now, his mind's eye was free to piece together all that he'd seen in his short life, and all that Keht had shown him; and it could make the ugly, fleeting scene for him on the mirage of the horizon. The woman. The child.

He waved the thought from his face like a fat and buzzing fly. "Of course." He could hear his own breathing deepen with his body's effort. "Of course I understand, little thing." His gaze hung on his lover's face, just a moment, then dropped to his feet to watch how they mastered the sand. "It was justice," he nodded, "like the brothel, like with Irfan." A first attempt at mimicking the southerner's gait only had him stumbling. Back straight; another go. "You have delivered justice." His toes spread wide. Easier, now.

He lifted his eyes again to Cobra's. "If you are to be a god, you will have to deliver more. More justice, more atrocity" The thin line of his lips might have been curiosity, might have been strain. "Are you prepared to do it? That, and for this journey ahead of us. The king, and his slave, and the amber. Are you ready?"

 

COBRA -

 

Justice. It was a comforting word to cling to; it had a weight to it, not unlike Sigvard's broad body. Still, even with the stability of this 'justice' he had delivered, with the reasoning for it, the memories of his atrocities still lingered in his mind. A burden. Surely this was why old gods were mad or slow or demanded to be left alone. He had just a handful of terrible acts crawling on his back; how many did these ancient, immortal spirits have on theirs?

"Nothing prepares you for these things, Sigvard," he replied, the words spluttering, almost like laughter. Yet his smile held a tinge of pain. "I cannot imagine what we might have to do, not just at the Capital, but elsewhere. After that, when I free of Keht, it will be even harder. There will be no escape, no sleeping where some other spirit can move my body instead. I will be alone with my thoughts." Particularly is Sigvard left him too, in the woods, to find his animal pelt. Cobra remembered this; it crawled on his back, too. It was waiting for him in the future, should he even make it that far.

"I will take it as it comes," he announced, carrying on at his steady pace through the sand dunes. "That is the only way to do it. With you with me, it can be done, I think. I only hope that you don't get scarred in quite the same way as Irfan. He wasn't ready for that day in the brothel. He hasn't been the same ever since. But you... you're stronger, aren't you?" he glanced back at the Northlander. "You must be."

In time, when the Urdai encampment came into view, Urd was there, at the outskirts, kneeling in the same place in the sand where he had been most nights, facing Hamad's palace. When he spotted the pair approaching, his eyebrows raised in surprise. Then too, did his body, sand falling from his dark-skinned legs as he drew himself up to his towering height.

"Cobra," he tilted his head when they got close enough to speak to one another. "I did not think you would return. At least, not your spirit. I expected Keht."

"I'm sure you did," Cobra narrowed his eyes, glowering up at the man. The memory of their first time in the desert together was easy enough to recall. Even easier now, in hindsight, to see it for what it was; stealing a night with one's lover, or at least as close as one could get to a god without telling his host he was ever there at all.

"Sigvard," Urd nodded at the blond, standing aside to let them pass as though they were at a doorway. "I did not expect you either. Keht would be trying to come to me alone, now."

"He has," Cobra grumbled as the group walked to the tents. A large tent, this time, but with no goat waiting for sacrifice. Just simple mats for sitting. "I want to know why."

"To choke, of course," The chief answered brightly, bringing his own hand up to his throat in a mock gesture as he said it. So casually, as though he might be describing the recipe for a meal. "It is a custom. Sigvard, surely Keht has asked you to choke him, too?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

That first night among the tents could have just as well been a nightmare—it had had that same quality of ethereal horror, even thinking of it now. And Sigvard did think of it. Seeing the chief rise to his feet, he remembered the gore of sacrifice, the shamans' distant singing coming shrill over the sand, and most of all the holy, unholy bonding between Keht and Urd.

Still, he'd managed it. He'd taken up the knife and done his wretched duty, that night, and hundreds of terrible nights before then. In this way, yes, he was sure he was stronger than Irfan. He'd answered Cobra as much: He was ready. Atrocity would not frighten him off or leave him staring into the mud of the battlefield like those boys who pretended to be men. If it was his god's justice, he would take up the knife, and do his wretched duty.

It could have been a nightmare, that night. But here, now, daylight seemed to burn away any sense of it. The chief, though towering, was smaller than he remembered; dwarfed by the desert, somehow, and by his own surprise at seeing the two of them. There was the clamour of the tribespeople, and the faint smell of goat shit, and it struck the Northlander that these folk, for all their mysticism, were so much like any other desert savages. Of course he knew better. He'd seen their magic. But it was comfort enough—amusement enough—to let his guard drop as he pushed through the flap of the tent.

The question earned a barked laugh, incredulous, directed at the floor as he considered which hide would best cushion his ass.

"He has not." Settling down with a near-violent noise of relief, he lifted both arms to beckon Cobra. "I have done it once, against his will, meaning to put him to sleep." Or, if not that, to kill him. "And he has offered to pervert my mind, to show me things—but he has not asked this of me, no." The idea seemed perfectly absurd to him, evident in the knitting of his brow as his gaze went to Urd. "The custom is between you and him alone, I thought...? You have your bond." Cobra had told him the fable, Urd and Keht, before he had even met the ancient god who took his lover's body. "Why are you so sure he would ask me to do this thing?"

 

COBRA -

 

Urd sat not on furs but in the sand between them, knees sinking into the earth and turning him as statuesque as the spot he had guarded on the edge of the desert. Cobra watched him for a moment before sighing and taking a seat next to Sigvard. Not close enough be too familiar, not close enough to burden him with his body heat, but close enough. He did not want to be held right now. But Urd's eyes were as sharp as his features were rough and desert-worn, and his hazel eyes twinkled with knowing as he smiled at them.

"You are lovers, yes?" he asked. "Water follows any path that it can take until it forges something familiar. If I cannot be with him, the next person to ask for this thing is you, naturally."

Cobra scoffed. He supposed he should not have felt shocked, but still, the audacity of it. He and Sigvard were one thing, but Urd and Keht... that was something else entirely. "So you do love him," he accused.

"Yes," Urd answered serenely. "He and I are bound together in a way much stronger than Keht and his vessel. I love him, and I watch over his people while he is gone."

"Less people," Cobra said snidely, tucking his feet under him with a wrinkled nose. "Even less than when I met you last. Nowhere near the hordes my father said you had."

Urd offered only the tiniest flicker of a tight smile. "We have been walking the desert for a very long time," he said, voice quiet but losing none of its presence. "I am hoping that this thing you plan to do, in the Capital, will make it so that we can have a home again. Back in the mountains, where we started. The notches in the slopes are still there; all we have to do is farm the land. The women will have children again. Other nomads will come to us in time. We will be happy."

"And if we fail?" Cobra asked gravely.

"That does not necessarily spell our doom," Urd tread carefully with his words. "But it would be unfortunate, for you to die. If it comes to that, you, SIgvard, should kill them all. You are bound to find the piece of Keht sitting somewhere in the blood afterwards." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander's eyes kept on Urd's, wary, as he tried and failed to work out his riddle. Nevermind what water did or didn't do—if Keht saw in him any qualities of being a lover, even on behalf of Cobra, even in desperation to be throttled or whatever ridiculous thing, he hadn't shown it. He had not been warm to Sigvard, nor exceptionally kind, nor vulnerable, and the pale giant couldn't imagine taking the place of a lover without these things. It was why he was disbelieving, still, when the ancient creature and the desert chief insisted on calling their bond by that name,  _ 'love.' _ And why his brow furrowed in fresh skepticism when Cobra called it the same.

The warrior kept tight-lipped through the philosophy of these alien things and their alien bond. He was more interested in fabled hordes, and the Capital, and blood; his excitement at the ideas, or maybe his agitation, more and more obvious in the way he picked at the skin around his toes. Urd's sentimentality did not surprise him. He had seen that man's heart laid bare his first night out here among the tents, his so-called love for his Keht and the land and his people. What he did not expect was Cobra's question, his apparent interest in whether or not the Urdai lived or died and joined their beloved heaps of dust. Did the little god have so much love for his people, still...?

He would have to ask him, later; for now, the confusion only complicated his answer to Urd. His eyes went to his own picking fingers as he strained for some impression of diplomacy.

"I have no problem with you or Keht." It was as close as he would come. "But my loyalty is to Cobra, not to you. If he should die..." He made no attempt to disguise the discomfort on his face. He'd given it thought. Of course he'd given it thought. The problem was that he couldn't manage much further than the thought, because all the things he would once say about vengeance would sound impotent coming from him now. The woman, the boy, they had never seen justice; who was he to promise it to Cobra?

Of course he wasn't being asked for justice. Only Keht. "If Cobra would like me to find Keht in the blood, I will find him in the blood," he muttered. "But if he should die, I am likely gone already, or soon after. You would have more luck with the witches." Here, his eyes lifted to Urd's again. "They seem to be fixated with you. You and your mountains. They say they have love for you—they may help you find your Keht again, if we fail." At last, a grunt, as he pulled a hang-nail free. "But we will not fail."

 

COBRA -

 

Urd chuckled, crossing his feet and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. When a young Urdai girl pushed through the tent flaps with a vase of water, he cupped his hands like a beggar and let her pour some water into the makeshift bowl. He drank it with a well-practiced motion, not spilling a drop. "I can see you doubt my words," he smiled at Sigvard as the girl moved on to Cobra, "Perhaps the way I understand things is no longer the way that they are. Many things, how they should be, that is not the way that they are, any more. If I confuse you, I am sorry. I may not be tired but I am very old, all the same. I've found that it's best not to fight the course of fate. But for something people, that fight is what gives their lives meaning. It can't be helped."

Cobra, for his part, cupped his hands together in a different way, his palms more firmly connected so water seemed less likely to spill. This, however, proved more difficult to drink from, and he had to all but tilt his face up to the heavens in order to drink. Wiping his chin on the back of his hand with a ragged sigh, he pinned Urd with a look of suspicion. "Are you talking about me?" he grumbled.

"You have never stopped fighting, little vessel," Urd chuckled, mirth dancing in his eyes. "But who's to say that's not the way it is supposed to be? It is impossible to know."

Cobra grumbled, the paradox of Urd's talk rubbing him the wrong way. He'd always been more direct and decisive in the few philosophical musings that he had; he had little patience for open-ended arguments. Sigvard's talk of loyalty appeased him somewhat. At least he had one follower who would revere him. "Do it," he told the larger man, looking to his face. "If I should die, let Keht be complete. Let him grow ten feet tall and tear the cunts apart."

"He's a little taller than that," Urd said slyly. He watched as the girl approached Sigvard, gesturing gently with the vase as if to ask if he wanted a drink. "But I am glad that you still feel a love for your mother's people. It is good for us, to have our protector in fewer pieces. The loss of the amber after the Taking is something we still mourn to this day."

The chieftain seemed a little surprised to learn of the witches' infatuation with him. "The pale people?" he asked, tilting his head to one side. "We have not seen the goatherds for a generation. We had heard talk of ones with magic, but most of the stories of the North, Keht got them himself from a man who stopped coming to meet him. We don't know where he went. It seems we have caused the same loss in others, by not returning to our home for so long. It would be nice to see them again." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard watched the men in quietude, soothed somewhat, somehow, by the chief's fey smile, and likewise by his lover's mutterings. Strange. Each of the men had a godliness about him, Urd with his seemingly endless patience and Cobra with his biting wrath—but as much as they were holy, they were pitifully, painfully mortal. Each of them incomplete. Urd without his Keht, and Cobra exhausted by the burden. They spoke, and drank, and did all the movements of living around some great emptiness. Like a fire without smoke.

The vase wagged at his head. He had seen the others drink, and knew it would be uncouth to break form and take the whole vessel and drain it from the lip. But there was that nagging burn in his throat, and he knew too that trying to make a cup with his hands, tightly or loosely or whatever else, would be catastrophically humiliating for him; so he plucked it from the girl, tipped it to his parched mouth, and drained it all the same.

"You'll have your chance tonight," he announced, gruff, sucking droplets off his lip as he offered the empty jug back to the woman. "One of them, a sullen little thing, has asked to come and visit you. Alone—or rather with his master to guide him. He would not come with us now, I mean." He hadn't understood it, Eilif's refusal to join them, but now at least he was sure that it had been for the best: With the witch out of sight, Cobra's murderous threats had turned to the distantly hypothetical sort.

The Northlander stifled a belch, tipping his head as though the warning held no real importance.  _ The Taking _ had put a stitch in his brow _. _ More curious than confused; he could work out what the name referred to well enough, and so he was grateful to the Urdai for being a straightforward people in this sense. "The amber—the witches have their stones, too, that hold power. But not like this amber, I think. Keht is weak without it. Missing things." He remembered too, now, how the prophet had said Eilif might  _ make use _ of it. "What is its power...? What is the story of this amber of Keht's?"

 

COBRA -

 

The little god clicked his tongue at the sight of Sigvard's impropriety, sitting upright as if to scold him. Urd waved him down, the soothing motions of his palm seeming to placate the young girl, too, who had gasped in shock when the jug was tugged from her hands. "It is fine," Urd soothed, shaking his head. "We are near the coast now. We have plenty of water; the women go there every day and boil it over fires to collect the steam." 

Cobra was no stranger to the method of using condensation to take the salt out of the ocean; it was used for a lot of fine drinking water in Navan, although they had wells to serve their needs, also. Still, he got the impression that Urd himself was unable to leave the desert. Why else wouldn't he have come into Navan properly instead of lingering at the edge of the sands like this? Clicking his tongue with a furrow in his brow, he watched as the girl jugged the vase to her chest and all but fled the tent. Sigvard's pale skin was probably strange to her, especially if she had grown up with tales of pale men wielding magic or worse, stealing women for their slave trade.

"Oh?" Urd leaned forward, eyes bright. "These things do move in rhythms, then. It is fitting that a magic man should come to visit me. Yes, that is good." He leaned back, resting his broad hands on the top of his thighs as if to affirm his own decision. A thin smile lingered on his lips as Sigvard asked of the amber. "Amber is made by trees," he began sagely. "This amber is very old; it has been with us since the beginning, since the first time we began to walk the desert. The tree it is from is sacred to us. It was always Keht who kept it... the first vessel, I mean. Not his form from before." 

As he spoke, he gestured to his cloth-wrapped forehead, and Cobra surmised that the amber had been kept inside Keht's turban. Watched the chieftain carefully, the way that his gaze would flick in Cobra's direction but not truly at him; higher. Taking a deep breath, he tried to be more aware of himself in a different sense of the word and he supposed he could feel eyes open, a second awareness lingering with him. Yet he felt none of the familiar tug of the old god trying to take control of his body. Sulking, perhaps, that he had not been permitted to come here alone as he had wished. 

"Over time, the closeness did put a piece of Keht inside the stone, yes," Urd carried on, a furrow forming in  his brow. "But there are other things troubling him, I think. He cannot continue like this forever. One day, he will have to stand on his own two feet again."

Cobra swore, a bright flash having shocked him more than anything else, making him flinch. "That is fine by me," he groused, blinking the drifting colours from his vision. "I have things I need to do without his interference."

"So when will you set out?" Urd asked, tipping his head. "You will follow the coast road, yes?" His gaze turned to Sig again. "If you attempt to cross the desert, you will die. Your people are not made for it."

"Irfan is arranging a caravan," Cobra muttered. The comment of Sig's demise didn't quite sit well with him; his hand groped for the other's and curled over the top of the man's pale knuckles as if he could protect him that way. "We'll follow the coast road."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Keht's sudden presence, invisible and soundless, seemed to Sigvard to fill the dry air of the tent and stifle breathing. Goosebumps bloomed over pale skin. He was not afraid of the beast, not anymore, although maybe he should have been; he only desperately did not want Cobra to be taken from him, leaving him alone again among these strange people.

The careful hand over his own was a comfort in this, much more than it was for the southern chief's matter-of-fact telling of his dying—gods, the warning would have  _ amused _ him if in he was in any mood for amusement, for he knew well enough how fucked he'd be if he struck out into the sands. If he hadn't learned the fact of the matter from his journey south from Mottstad, there was the trudging walk, today, from Navan out to the tents. All the same, he turned his palm up to Cobra's, and held the little thing's hand tightly, and drew it closer to the warmth of his wide chest.

"You will follow us...?" A murmur and chewing of his tongue signaled that the words, like so many he'd imagined before, hadn't come out quite right. He rocked on his wide ass, which had now begun to prickle from sitting on the firm ground.

"You will have to stay some ways away from the Capital, I mean." They all understood this, he knew. There would be no killing the king with the whole city on alert of an Urdai horde on the horizon. "Is there some help you can promise us? We will need every advantage with our task there, and with fetching the amber." He still couldn't quite wrap his mind around how a stone could come from a tree, but had decided it wasn't worth questioning. "We will need to flee, afterward, at least, and there are not so many of you that can fight a king's army, I think. Will you be able to hide us in the deserts?" His face squinted with some small skepticism. "You and Keht have your magic, but—they have their fire-worshippers, yes?

 

COBRA -

 

Some of the spark faded from Urd's golden-brown eyes at the suggestion that the Urdai follow their caravan to the Capital. His wide mouth pressed in a firm line and a deep breath through his nose made his scarred chest swell, just barely. "We can follow," he reasoned. "But I cannot leave the desert. My people can, but the Capital is a place of great pain for us. I do not think you could convince anyone, not even the bravest of them, to step foot within those blackened walls."

Cobra frowned, uneasy with the energy writhing inside him, knotting in over itself like a basket of unsettled serpents. Even as the chieftan spoke, he could see the Capital city, somehow burned and yet still standing, as though he were standing right there on the shores of the eastern coast. He looked to his hand, expecting to find stone to match the feelings in his palm, but there was only Sigvard's ruddy flesh. It was a strange vision; less abrupt than before. Suspiciously, he thought of Eiliff and the business with the mirror. Could Keht show him things with more control, now?

"Yes," Urd said gravely. "They worship fire. Fire is sacred to us too, but we do not worship it in the same way. We do not consider it to be the highest thing." 

Even Urd's nose wrinkled with distaste as he spoke of the Capital. Blinking through the memories that overlaid themselves on his vision, Cobra straightened up slightly. "Coals," he piped up. "Burning red, in the sand."

"Hello, Keht," Urd said with a thin smile.

Cobra shook his head, still conscious, until he noticed that the Urdai man was looking not at his face, but above it. He didn't bother looking over his shoulder; he knew he would find nothing there.

"Yes," Urd carried on. "How coals on the beaches. We've seen them walk them before. We used to fish those shores; now we don't go past the standing rock. Even though the tyrant is dead, we do not trust his replacement to respect us, either. And as for hiding you," Urd looked back to Sigvard, turning over his dark-skinned hands to display pinkened palms. "I cannot. But Keht could, if he was restored. The shifting sands are his domain, he can keep you safe there, even from Capital soldiers. But this is a serious gamble. If you fail to secure the amber, the Capital will keep you, I think, in a way that would make death seem preferable."

Cobra flinched, fingers tightening around Sigvard's hand. "... We'll get it," he said softly, a deep furrow in his brow. "We will find a way."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard had been scrutinizing what he could see of Cobra's face, watching for change, watching for the shift in posture and otherworldly serenity that had typically signaled Keht's arrival and his lover's vanishing to darkness. It didn't come. Or it half-came, he couldn't be sure in the light, and he didn't know what to make of the prophet being there and not all at once.

So, quiet, he tightened his grip about the southerner's hand in turn, and nodded vaguely at his soft assessment. Again, with more surety. Cobra had a strange way of wearing optimism, all meek and conflicted and tied up in knots, but it was optimism all the same—such a different thing from the soggy, frightened thing he'd once had to convince of his destiny at the bathside, and so much easier to rally behind.

"We will," he murmured, with a force of quiet conviction. He was speaking to his lover, Urd as good as forgotten. "You are clever and strong-minded and very good with your poisons." His lips pricked into a small grin, maybe convincing, maybe not, and he lifted the little thing's fingers to kiss at. "And I am strong, at least, and good with matters of killing. There will be Irfan, too, if I fail, and the shamans intend to help us..." His eyes wandered up, above that mess of dark curls, in search of what Urd had seen of the creature.  _ Taller than that. _ But he saw only air. Only the tent's canopy. "And Keht..." His voice as aimless as his gaze as it came again to Cobra's face. "He is useful, even if he is weak. It will not be simple, but we will manage it."

At last, he turned to the chieftan, spine straight and shoulders squared. "I understand you are desert-bound, and I would not ask your people to come too near the Capital." If only because of the alarm it would raise. "Still, I thought you would want to come along and be close to him as long as you were able," he remarked, letting on some surprise at how the man had balked at the idea of following. "Your prophet, your lover. I thought you would want to protect him as well as you could, in the sands, at least." His widening smile, though terribly timed, was meant to be a diplomatic one. He wasn't blind to the parallels between him and Urd and their devotions, and had felt he'd drawn the natural conclusion. If it were him, stuck in the desert, and Cobra fucking off to some foreign city to kill or to die or to be tortured forever, he would have found some way to pick up the desert and take it with him. He would have followed.

But, he conceded, "I am maybe single-minded like this. Do what you like."

 

COBRA -

 

A light flutter of laughter passed Cobra's lips, cutting through the seriousness of the thing with the boon of Sigvard's praise. He gave the Northlander's hand another quick squeeze. Were it not for his dusky skin and the shade of the canvas tent they sat in, he may have even been caught blushing. How strange it was to feel this way, in such a situation. By all accounts he had once thrust his face into a goat's neck in this very tent, after all. "Yes, the poisons," he murmured, lips lingering in a smile. "I have a feeling I will have to be kinder with those than I'd like to be. Like a slave who cares about pleasing his master, again." Always again. Inescapable, it seemed.

"These things move in rhythms," Urd smiled sagely, and Cobra wondered if the man had read his thoughts. No, impossible. Surely he was just good at reading an expression. That, or Keht had shared his sentiments with the chieftan silently, somehow. Glancing over his shoulder, he still saw nothing. He could feel nothing, save for a vague awareness, some nagging sureness that the entity walked behind him, just as Urd had said.

At Sigvard's words, Urd only chuckled, his teeth shining bright in his face. "You pale people assume a lot of things," he said easily. "I protect my love in my own way. And the prophet is no lover of mine, although we did once..." He trailed off, gesturing vaguely at Cobra, who only scoffed quietly and looked away. Sigvard already knew he had fucked Urd, after all. It was hardly a thing that could hurt them now, he thought. Even the insult of being used to get closer to Keht without his knowledge was starting to fade. 

"So the prophet is me, the ... 'vessel'," Cobra followed along, tilting his head. "And Keht is just... Keht?"

"It is a name you share," Urd nodded. "Names are powerful things. The first Keht, the prophet, he carved his name into a rock near the place that became the Capital. It is a sacred place for us. Perhaps one day you will carve your name somewhere, Sigvard. You will go above the mountains after all this is done, yes?" His eyes were lingering above their heads again.

 

SIGVARD -

 

Words, words. Prophet, vessel, Keht—Sigvard was confounded by all these ways of talking about the same damned thing, and by being so pointedly corrected when he'd been understood well enough from the start. It seemed to him, too, that the chief enjoyed too much how the technicality gave him an excuse to talk of fucking Cobra. Shadows of jealousy aside, it was humiliating to the little southern god. There seemed to be no other point to it.

His brutish hand wagged it all away like so many flies. There was talk of rocks, and mountains, and names. "I can't write," he answered reflexively, "and I have no business carving my name into things. It's Cobra who will leave his mark on this world." On rocks. On Sig's own pale flesh, if he ever devised a brand more precise than the bite that gnarled his shoulder.

The soldier's head rocked, then, caught halfway between a nod and a shake. He had not shared his intentions with Urd, not precisely, but it was an easy guess as to how he had come to know them. He was not angry with Keht for this. He had been free with his secrets from the start, with Cobra, with Hamad, with that ancient creature; too free, maybe, but he hadn't ever learned to be cautious, and even now, even this god whispering his most private things, wouldn't teach him. The heavy knot in his stomach and the dimness that took the light out of his smile was owed to something else.

"I had meant to," he offered. "There is a thing I must do there." The woods. The pelt. To finish it, ten long years after he'd begun. But there had been the forever after that, after 'all this is done,' the home he had given away his life for and that had been promised to him by Cobra.

He turned to watch his lover's face. To see him, as Urd saw Keht. "I do not know what 'all this' is," he confessed to him, lowly. "I do not know what it will mean for it to be done." He couldn't see it. There was so much between now and then, and it was as easy to imagine snow and mud as it was to imagine himself gutted on the king's palace floor. "There is this thing, too, with the witch saying the mountains are sick." Without turning his face from his godling next to him, his eyes fled briefly to Urd. "A madness, he said. I did not see it in my time there, but shamans are meant to be more in tune with these things. I think it is better to stay away until we can know that it is safe."

He had been still for too long. His ass had gone numb. In turning to face Cobra properly, and taking up his other hand, he grunted at the eruption of needle-pricks going down to his toes. "I will go where you go," he resolved. Breathing seemed to come easier to him. "Can you see it better than I can? When you are free of Keht and Hamad and all these small men. Do you know where you will go? North, if it is safe, or would you stay in the desert...?"

 

COBRA -

 

Urd's expression changed to one of surprise, perhaps flirting perilously close to pity, though he seemed to be aware that the pale man was not fond of him and did not with to ignite the flames of his anger much further. Still, it was a thing that could not be ignored. "You can't write your own name?" he pressed. "This is a very important thing. For our children, it is a rite of passage. Cobra, you could teach him, yes?"

The little deity flinched, pressing his lips together with a frown. He squirmed where he sat. "What good is Navanese script to a Northlander?" he grumbled.

"But you know the pale people's alphabet, too," Urd pressed. Again, his golden eyes flicked between the man and the empty space above his head, and Cobra grimaced, wondering just how many of his thoughts the invisible god was leaking to the chieftan through the connection he shared. Shameless snitch. He was angry, certainly, that he'd been denied the unaccompanied visit he requested to make.

"Cunt," he muttered, fuming. "Yes, I do," he spoke up, looking to Sigvard. "I can teach you, if you like. It is only seven runes."

"I'd recommend it," Urd said, bright eyes dancing again.

The talk of the end of all this was worrying, but at least it was not annoying, like the way his secrets were being shared so freely. "Do not feel so alone, Sigvard," Cobra cooed with a sigh, patting the top of the man's meaty hand. "I cannot see the end of it, too. Who knows how it will go? Gods, I do not even know what I seek to become a deity of. Will all this feeling of godliness leave me once Keht has left my body? We will have to wait and see. But I will keep my promise. I will come with you, to the mountains, and I will help you make a home again. Even if I must do it as a mortal, even if the mountains are infected with a sickness, as the witches say. I still have my... reservations, about the things that Eiliff says." His nose wrinkled as he was filled once more with the feeling of distrust and foreboding that he'd always had about the little waif, even more so after he started remembering him so clearly in his past when such a thing should be impossible.

"He touched a memory," Urd nodded, following along with some unheard commentary as though the situation were commonplace. "Magic is a dangerous thing. Mankind is not meant to have it, I think. It's not a power they can wield alone without great consequences. But I would still like to see it," he smiled. "I shall look forward to my visit from this witch."


	18. Bread Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, we're all caught up on a couple years of roleplaying! We're going to start updating on a scene-by-scene basis now, so the chapters won't be quite as monstrously long as they have been up to this point.

SIGVARD -

Sigvard's pale eyes caught the light from the tent-flaps as they danced over every feature of Cobra's soured little face, and among his forest of beard there was the sliver of teeth. Pretty thing. All this talk of promises and mistrust and most of all cunts had made him see it again, even in this dimness, and now his gaze was deliciously stuck; it wouldn't go to Urd to answer him, although his voice gruffly did. "I'll tell him so." It wasn't like any of these secrets that Keht had been telling his chief, and what a shame it was that he couldn't make him feel feeble in this way. But if Urd had secrets, the warrior felt, it would take more than a god to root them out.

His arms were heavier than he remembered as he lifted his palms to his lover's cheeks, pushed blunt fingertips through dark curls and tangled them firmly there. Pretty thing. With a dip of his head, his mouth found the other's in softness, in patience, his kiss like quiet worship against those lips. Undone by the way his body rocked forward in eagerness for him; and if not by that, by the way his heavy arms dropped to catch around his waist and under his plush ass.

"Cobra." Hummed. Like the first time; like prayer. "I want my feet on solid ground again." His god was good to him. His god was so beautifully generous. "Come. Let's leave this place."

COBRA -

A quiet startle, a single breath as thick fingers wormed themselves into the long curls atop his head. Suddenly very aware of his own heart inside his chest, Cobra was still for a moment before he leaned into the kiss. Irreverent as always, his tongue flecked out to taste the man, humming softly at the warm and comforting grip under his arse. It was no concern of his that Urd was there to see this act of intimacy; he'd had him, too, and Keht only know just how many lecherous and widely-witnessed acts the little performer had done throughout his lifetime.

"Sigvard," he murmured in kind, pressing his body against his (heat be damned). "...Yes," he agreed, somewhat in a daze. "Yes, let's. We'll go now," the last address was to Urd, and perhaps Keht, too, like an afterthought. How shocking it still was to feel such an affection for a man. Slowly getting to his feet, he released his grip on the man but felt a tug nonetheless; weak but undeniably ethereal, like a tether snapping after being pulled too thin. What followed was a protest, most likely; a spiteful stab of a vision of blood splattered on the floor in the old city, of a young Urd's smiling face, his head uncovered. What followed was more personal; albeit representative. Two snakes entwined, fucking in the sands. Stumbling with the intrusion of the vision, Cobra's breath hitched as the feeling of the sand shifting underneath his naked side as Urd had rut into him briefly ebbed through his body like a wave. "Cunt," he swore again, more breathless now. "Come on, Sigvard."

You don't know what you deny me.

Cobra had some idea of it but he denied it nevertheless. Tipping his head back as though that might rid him of some of the heat that had collected in his collarbone, he took Sigvard's hand and led him out through the tent flaps.

***

EILIF -

It was night, Eilif knew, and still the sand beneath his feet clung to the heat of the banished sun. The warmth put a softness to the air. It made the vast desert feel small, somehow, and blunted the edge of Valdis' shrill song that carried a hundred yards ahead of them. He didn't know how she managed to sing. The effort of movement in this strange terrain made his body fight for air, and he fought in turn—shallow, even—but there was no such strain in her voice, her gait, her grasp about his wrist that tugged him along like a mule.

Quiet, then. A break in that crying call to let the silence of the land surround them.  
"Mother—" He shattered it, gasping, desperate for relief. "Slower. Please." Like in the hall, like with Cobra, his skin was sticky and everything was going wrong. All that open space was crowding inward. "Mother!"

"Soon." Her voice was low, soft, seeming to cross miles before it came to him. "We are not far." A pause. He heard her next breath come over her shoulder. "Slower will not be easier, Eilif."

His next word crumbled into a whimper. He shook his head. "Please." Slowing all the same, he leaned against the iron grip of her fingers, cold, colder than the night, until in an instant he was released to nothing. The ground did not cushion his fall. As he scrambled in his place, warm sand sucked at his hands and at his knees and all he could hear was the sound of himself and that deafening, smothering silence. "Mother?" On his hands and knees, now, he couldn't place her. "Valdis...?"

"You are weak like this." Somewhere to his left. Far and close at once. He did not turn to look.

In the early hours of the night before, his master had discovered what he'd done. He'd expected reprimand; something swift and furious and uncompromising, as was her way. He'd braced himself for it. But she had said nothing. She had been quiet, quiet like the desert was now, and the cold dread of her inevitable judgment had been festering in him since the sun had risen and now fallen again; it had made his skin clammy and his stomach rot. And here it was, at last. Of course. Here it was, when he'd made himself exhausted and brittle from waiting, waiting, waiting. So he knelt, palms in his lap, and steadied his breathing  
"Olrun would weep to see you," the witch went on, and Eilif could hear the grief backing her words. The disdain, too. "For her to deliver this gift to you, and for you to reject it—you have been foolish."

He shook his head. He shouldn't have, and he knew it, and so he shook it again and put all his strength into keeping upright and not falling empty to the earth. "Please understand." Was he alone in his thinking...? The warrior, the prophet, his master, nobody seemed to understand this thing. "Please just understand, Mother; understand I had no choice."

"You have no choice in this, child," she spat, and now the soft air didn't seem to temper her. "You—"

His hands balled to fists. She was right, he knew she was right, and all the same the words tumbled frantic from his lips: "We were called to Keht's side." Sitting in that library, clutching that useless scroll, he'd worked it out over and over and over again beyond any glimmer of doubt. "If you refuse to speak to him, I must, and if—"

"You do not decide the course of these things!" Somewhere to his left. Closer, closer.

He shook his head, carrying on in spite of her. "And if I must, I must protect—"

A hot-cold pain whipped across his cheek. He curled and crushed the air from his lungs and forced himself quiet, quiet like the desert, quiet like her.

A dry wind whispered over the sands, and chilled him through; he heard her breathe it deeply, luxuriously, and still her voice was weary. "You do not protect anyone like this." A hand on his shoulder twisted into his cloak and pulled. He stood to find his footing. "I have tried to teach you." Once again, they plodded forward; slower, much slower, but the sand still sucked at his feet, and it wasn't a bit easier. "I have tried to share with you the wisdom of all the Mothers before. But you have scorned me, Eilif, and so you must learn in your own way."  
Quiet. Only quiet. He wouldn't argue; he wouldn't complain of the lurch in his stomach or the claustrophobia of all this empty space. His breathing was shallow and even, and in time, that keening song carried again ahead of them on the crisp and cooling air.

The sound of goats made his ears prick, and their smell put half-formed images in his mind—blue sky over tall grass, craggy rock, the yellow bloom of dandelion. Things from childhood. Things not. A goat, dead, a snake at its feet. A ring.

Sounds of life eked out that uncomfortable silence at last, and the smoke of a distant cooking-fire dusted his cheeks. Valdis came behind him, her gentle hand on his back to steer him; as with their arrival in Navan, she made herself a shadow with practised ease. It took a moment more for Eilif to remember himself, to smooth the stitch from his brow and to find what peace he could in this strange darkness. In his ear, a soft voice pronounced his native tongue: He is here.

Hazel eyes wandered the ground where he imagined feet to be. "Urd." Goosebumps rippled over his skin. This was a holy moment. The rejoining of their peoples. A communion, finally, after centuries of solitude between them. It was a wonder beyond imagining. Why, then, did the chief's title sound empty on his lips...? Why was he not falling to his knees in rapture? "I am Eilif." Some part of him remembered to shift his cloak, to find the bag slung at his hip. "Mother—" He turned his chin in the direction of Valdis. "Mother watches me." From the bag, he produced a loaf, and held it before him, half proudly, half seemingly terrified it would crumble to dust. "I have come to break bread with you."

URD -

Urd did not lament their parting in quite the same erratic, fussing way as the old god. He was complete, after all. With a full perspective on things, he knew he only had to wait. In time, in time. The world moved in rhythms and currents, slow, and yet fast enough for a day to pass in a blink of an eye if he'd let it. With his eyes closed again now, his knees buried deep in the sand and the ebbing ripples of the night breeze playing across his face, he could feel the footsteps in the sand like tremors on a spider's web. Their voices carried across the desert far more easily than they realised, especially when the tribe was settled and quiet. There was no feasting or undulating tonight. They were beginning to fast again in preparation for the journey ahead. The desert didn't meet the coast until a place close to the capital, where the prophet's rock was. The Urdai could not allow themselves dreams of staying fat on fish in the same way that the Navanese did. But it was nothing they weren't already used to.

He thought her cruel but not unkind; guilty of being a teacher with a poor technique but not much else, it seemed. Nothing else he could prove with what little he knew about these strange, magical people; these witches. Urd still remember when whispers of Olrun had reached the ancient city. Whispers in quite the literal sense, delivered by travelers and goatherds who had come to trade. The seers had not forseen the coming of men with magic. That had been the most alarming thing about it, for the seers had seen everything, even the city's own burning.  
Although, foresight could not prevent tragedies when corrupt men were involved. They'd all learned that lesson very well.

It was the mistreatment of the boy that bothered him the most, yes; he reached that conclusion naturally. The hierarchy of it; the cold rejection. The witches, with their pale faces and unsettling energy radiating from their hands, had not learned the same lessons over time as the Urdai people had. They were worse off for it. Urd was respected immensely but he was not much better than the old and the feeble in his tribe. He ate the same food, wore the same cloth and slept on the same furs. He protected the people carefully but most of all fairly. It was the only reason the tribe still persisted to this day.

A gentle bleating of a goat in the distance coaxed him to open his eyes and there they were, staggering up a sand dune in the darkness. The woman hung close behind the boy, her features so dark underneath the magical cloaking that they would certainly not be seen by a normal man. A man who saw the gods, however... her form and outline was still there, yes. He let a serene smile spread across his face, performing for her eyes only, since the littlest one had no sight for the time being.  
"Yes," he answered, still staying on his knees. "Eilif, and Valdis. I heard it on the sands. You are both mountain people, yes? I have been told that you are witches." As keen as the chief was to knock them off kilter by announcing his knowledge of their little spat, the fascination still shone clearly in his honey-gold eyes.

"Ah," he remarked, leaning forward with a grin and plucking the loaf out of the lad's hands. "We have not eaten bread for many, many years. Come," he finally stood, sand falling gently down his legs. Turning around, he beckoned them both deeper into the camp as he walked, towards the orange glow of a central campfire with the flames flickering low. Other members of the tribe lifted their heads in interest as the foreigners approached, but none made a sound; only watching. Urd slapped his hand gently on the side of the loaf but did not break its crust yet. He carried on until his face was illuminated in the golden-red glow, seating himself on a large driftwood log that had been dragged far enough away from the flames to be comfortable. He pat the space next to him so the boy could hear the sound.  
"Tell me," he said warmly, tearing off a morsel of the bread and holding it before Eilif's mouth, as if to feed him. "Why have you come? I understand who summoned you to Navan, but why have you come to see me? I have not met a goatherd in an age. I am surprised there are any among you who still remember my name."

EILIF -

Slim fingers, picked bloody, wandered the air until they found the offered morsel. The smell and then the taste of it was a comfort. Slow chewing seemed to calm these strange energies around him: The fire, warm, and Urd somehow warmer, and Valdis' caginess in the way she walked in meandering loops somewhere behind them.

Her guard had gone up abruptly, hearing they hadn't been alone in the desert. His own should have. But it was years and years now since he'd been a doe-eyed apprentice who was empty of all sense and who would look to her for cues on what to do about a sick child or an ancient text or a bit of bread. She didn't seem to have any answers for him now. Not the sort he wanted.  
"Urd...?" Caught between statement and question, a vague puzzle in his brow. If the chief was surprised to be remembered, Eilif was just as struck to think he might have been forgotten. "We remember," he assured, nodding, as if hearing this would come as some relief to the man. "Of course we remember. The Mothers keep stories about the Urdai, stories their Mothers told them, and so on. We make pilgrimage to the old city and remember." His lips parted for silence. If Urd had heard their names, he would have heard the music, too. "We sing to you. Sometimes. Even in the mountains."

But none of this was an answer. Or it was, but not in the way he was wording it—the common language felt like knots in his tongue. He turned his face to bask in the distant heat of the fire.

"It feels like—" A hand slipped from the safety of his cloak, made a fist, and came to his chest. "A loneliness, an incompleteness. Do you understand?" He didn't so much as turn to beckon an answer. Of course he understood, so far and so close to his Keht. "Death. A withering. There's a weakness in the mountains now, and in us along with it; and your people have been broken and wandering for so long. It isn't right. It feels as though neither of us are living." A deep breath was caught part-way through, and his fist dropped to tangle in his robe again. "I came tonight to be with you, among you, and to see what it means for our people to be close again." To ask, too, and to listen; he'd had one question for every step in coming here.

"And you?" He clarified: "The soldier, the large one, said you anticipated our visit. Is this true?"

URD -

Urd noted the sudden shift in the way the woman carried herself: the tension of it. It would seem that the mountain people knew him by name and little more if they did not know of his connection to the desert. It was better, that way, he reasoned. The Urdai had already been disturbed enough times for an entire age. The pain of the Capital still lingered in living memory: even today, most kept their spears close.

"It is good that your people remember," he smiled. "We cannot go back to the ancient city yet, but we draw near it once or twice a year, and sometimes, we hear the singing voices carry on the wind. Perhaps you have heard the mourning, too. Or perhaps the wind blows the wrong way for us to be heard in the mountains." The undulating, like spears of sound, kept others at bay, too. Urd already knew the Navanese wanted them gone soon, for the racket of it. The traders complained when they came to trade goats.

The little waif's final answer earned a chuckle from the old chief, and he tore off a piece of bread for himself and ate before he answered, watching the flames as he swallowed. He kept his golden eyes rooted on the ethereal glow as he spoke. "The Urdai are no strangers to incompleteness, but ours is not a withering, no; we are very much alive." A sly grin exposed his canines for a moment, catching the dancing light of the fire. "We suffer, yes, but we are better for it. To call us 'broken' is to listen to those who would undo us. You should take heed of that."

Turning back to Eilif, Urd studied his blind face with interest. "Yes," he answered, passing the loaf of bread back to him. "I am most interested in seeing this magic that your people have. The fact that you have it at all is a wonder to me. We Urdai see visions, but to perform magic is quite another feat. Many would say that it is not a thing meant for mankind at all. But I am sure you would not agree."

EILIF -

Listening in quietude, Eilif's breathing grew shallower, his body more and more still. It was somehow meant to hear him better, at first; as if a rigid posture might help him catch all those little details, spoken and unspoken alike. He leaned imperceptibly into the sound of the chieftain's smile and wondered what was beyond it. Distracted by the imagined cries of the Urdai, miles and miles from the ancient city, he nodded vaguely; he had not heard this mourning, but he had known others, sisters in the mountains, who had. They'd told the story weeping.

Although he took the loaf again in gratitude, his fingers seemed to treat it now more like a curiosity than a foodstuff, turning it this way and that under his own sightless gaze. His stomach had been in knots since waking. It was tradition, not hunger, that had him tear another piece. It was habit that made him chew. Mankind. Urd would not understand the double meaning in his choice of words, he thought; how the raiders and the goatherds and the Mothers alike would agree after all that magic was not meant for man, but for woman. Gods, what Valdis had once thought of him, the boy left at the mountainside. A rare thing; one for a dozen girls, a handful in a generation. A blessing, to some, and to others...

What she'd once thought of him.  
What she must think of him now.

"Maybe it isn't meant for us," he said, softly, plainly. The subject wasn't so complicated, and it wasn't so simple. "But it is given to us all the same. As babies, as children. The spirits call to us, and if we do not learn to listen, we suffer severely and we soon die." Returning the loaf, he collected his hands in his lap, palms open to the sky. "I've wondered since I was a boy if we are meant to learn, really, or if we're meant to reject it, born only to suffer and to die." His fingers curled over his palm, gingerly, protecting nothing. "I still wonder." Valdis' circles in the sand behind him grew wider, slower. "I have given my life to healing—sick people, sick lands—but I am not so naive as to think these acts are the better thing for the world." Maybe that sick boy, rescued from his illness, grows to become a murderer of hundreds. Maybe that blighted land's new harvest is burned by raiders in the spring and there's famine all the same. Maybe, maybe.

"Still." His shoulders barely lifted in a shrug. "I am here, so you know what I have decided, but I am not so sure as you think. Even today—" Such a long, long day. His nerves were raw from it, and a flush prickled his skin. "Today I have chosen not to listen." Suffering followed. It didn't need to be said. "So I cannot show you our magic, not tonight, not here." There were things that could be done, still, with the mirror, with other tricks, but this was not the beauty of it.

"It is not so different from you and the desert, I think." His brow pinched. Not so different, but still more different than he'd thought before his arrival here. "Forgive me. We have heard stories of you; but I did not know which were to be believed. How far you could see. And always...?" As if connected. It was strange. It was fascinating. Something seemed to occur to him, then: "Do you sleep? Do you dream?"

URD -

"Given, you say?" Urd raised his eyebrows again at that. He accepted the bread, seamlessly passing it along to another member of his tribe who had crept nearer to the flames. A half dozen more or so watching set of eyes began to creep in from the surrounding tents, their golden-hued irises looking at the pale visitors with interest. None of them were old enough to remember the mountain men from before; they had only heard the stories from the elders who now lay sleeping, most likely. Before the loaf made the rounds around the rest of the Urdai, a young woman, her skin clear save for a littering of sparring scars, cautiously approached Valdis and offered her the bread.

"So you are born with it now," Urd rubbed his chin curiously. "It was not my understanding that the magic was a birthright. We had suspected artefacts of some kind, or blood. We had guessed a lot of things, truly, for magic is mysterious. Who knows where it came from?" he laughed quietly. "Little use to wonder if you were meant to learn when you have already learned, I think. But I agree that the healing of people and lands is not something to be rushed with magic. It is a slow and careful thing, healing. But that does not mean there is no good in your actions, no..." The chieftain trailed off, the crackle of the tall flames in the campfire mingling with the hushed whispers of the tribe. Not many more came to spy on the visitors; most valued rest when they could get it. It was harder to sleep easily in the deeper parts of the desert.

"That is a shame," Urd sighed, looking somewhat crestfallen but otherwise no worse for wear. Things like this did not affect him so rashly. "I had hoped to see it. Another time, then. We will be following the caravan to the fire worshipper's city, after all. We will go where Keht goes."

Urd looked as though he may carry on speaking but the waif's questions cut him short. Leaning back on his hands on the log, he gave a low hum as he mulled over his answer. There had been plenty of stories about him over the years, he was sure. "It's true, the desert and I are connected," he confessed mildly, looking back in Eilif's direction to met his gaze. "I swore an oath to watch over these lands and watch over my people. I feel most life in it the way a spider might feel tremors in its web. I don't sleep, but I do dream," he smiled. "To dream while awake is almost like sleeping. If I am lucky, I will see memories of home."

EILIF -

In blackness, Eilif had nothing but the image of the spider. He watched a fly collide into a thread and get stuck by the wing; he saw its tortured struggle shake the whole tapestry. And in the next moment, she was there: That strange beast, all eyes, all legs.

He nodded his understanding. Hearing that smile again. Closing his eyes and his wonder-slacked jaw, he tried to find a sliver of the confidence with which Urd spoke about such matters. "Memories," he began, his voice a shadow in spite of himself, "we deal in memories. Dreams, too. We have magic for these things." It was the same as the chieftain had described, and it was very very different, and working it all out was too much for his splitting head. Valdis was in a better state to explain. Where had she gone...? He had heard her quiet gratitude, before, and her tearing of the bread, but now her footsteps seemed to mingle and be lost among the tribepeoples’.

A flush hit the witch's pale cheeks. His fists tightened around the fabric of his cloak in the effort of putting out of his mind the thought he was a child again, sickly and helpless, in that woman's care.

He went on. "There is a mirror, a ritual. We ask men to watch our eyes through this looking-glass and show us what they remember. And with dreams—there are those who need protection from their dreams, or want it, and so we will hold a vigil as they sleep and dream on their behalf." His fingers began to worry at the thick fabric they had tangled themselves in. "But there is something wrong in this place. Or with me. It's why I've chosen to suffer—" A hand lifted briefly to indicate his eyes. "—And not to listen. Last night, there was no ritual. I was only asleep. And I dreamt memories." Memories, not dreams, he was sure of it; he had more than learned the difference in his years. "And they were not my own. Cobra's, and Sigvard's, and Keht's, perhaps."

URD -

Urd let out a thoughtful hum, brow furrowed beneath the rim of his woad-dyed turban. "A mirror, then. That may have been what went wrong."

Keht had said the witch boy had put himself in one of Cobra's memories, that it was part of the reason the little snake disliked him with such venom. However, he had not elaborated on exactly how the witch had achieved that. He could not be blamed for such vagueness, truly, given the limited means of their communication. It would have been easier, much easier, to understand if Keht had been allowed to come alone... but Cobra could not be blamed for that, either. These men had not grown up with gods in their lives. Their fear was very rational from an outsider's point of view. Even now, he saw how EIlif shrank into his own cloak, afraid. Urd made no move to reach out to him; no, sharing his own memories would not help the matter when the waif was already suffering so. They were not good memories to see when blind, anyway.

"It is important to remember that Keht is not like us, and while he is Keht's vessel, Cobra is not like us, either," Urd explained carefully, turning towards the boy but otherwise keeping his distance. "The memories of Keht are sacred but they contain strange things; things that would drive a man mad. I do not think they would behave in the same way as a normal man's memories in your rituals, either."  
The chief paused for a moment, trying to pinpoint the most tactful way to explain the unexplainable. After a moment, he ventured: "I have heard other people speak of 'the time of the gods', when their gods walked the earth among them. They speak as if that time ended, as if the gods have left and gone to some other place. For the Urd people, this is not our way. The 'time of the gods' is now. It has always been this time. So it is less... hrm, alarming to us, when gods do the things that gods do. We know fear, but we are not consumed by it. This thing that you have done, to your eyes... it may consume you."

EILIF -

Eilif scarcely breathed through Urd's explanation, as if the act might disturb those careful words and the deliberate silence between. Hazel eyes searched nothingness for where the man was sitting. With his cheek turned from the fire towards the empty night, the chill crept in and lifted goosebumps down his spine.

The mirror. Maybe that was it. He'd considered the opposite, that he never should have allowed Keht to see into his eyes directly, but maybe the foolish thing was to think he could use those tools he knew with a creature unlike anything he'd ever met. Gods. Of course he'd gone into the Northlands and met those that called themselves gods; the ones who slaughtered whole armies, or shouted down fire, or walked for centuries from coast to coast. But this was not what Urd spoke of. He knew it. They were small, the ones above the mountains. They had never made him weep. Again, he nodded, without the words to articulate how much—how little, really—he understood.

The chill had gone. It was strange. It was a comfort: Hearing the chieftain speak of ages and gods and things reminded him of their place in time, and the infinity ahead of them, and the infinity behind. He felt suddenly miniscule. The day's struggle, his life's struggle, was a speck of dust. It wouldn't so much as strum the spider's web.  
And so it seemed at once absurd and wonderful that the wise man was concerning himself with some small stranger's fear. A smile warmed his lips. "I am consumed," he admitted, quietly. The illness brought blindness, fever, a twist in his gut. But his fixation had done so much worse to him in these few hours. The whole day was lost to it. And now? "I've been dreading sleep again. In case—" He interrupted himself to turn his head over his shoulder, where he'd heard footsteps. Valdis? Futile, of course.

"Could...?" His hesitation was more for Mother's sake than for Urd's. "Could I keep close to you?" There was the feeling of a body stood behind him, now, inches away. "I'm afraid I'm a danger to them, still, but I don't imagine I could do anything to you." The feeling of the woman's thin fingers sinking into his hair, playing gentle across his scalp, visibly surprised him. A silent blessing. The sheer relief of it washed him from shoulders to feet. "May I sleep where you are? Tonight, and maybe some days into the journey. I can tell you more of our magic. And if—if it's proved safe, maybe I can listen to the spirits again, and I can show you."

URD -

The chief's eyebrows raised. "Already?" A sound like a chuckle came from his throat and he showed his teeth again. "I do not think you are consumed just yet, little witch. There are far worse ways to be than how you are right now." As much as he joked, there was a hardness glimmering in his golden eyes. There were far worse ways to be, yes. And the witch may well come to be them, if he continued to cause himself so much despair. It was much better, in Urd's opinion, to undo it, to see again or at the very least sleep; to lean into his fears and know them. The chief would not at all be surprised to find out his god shared the same sentiment. He was surprised, however, at the waif's request.

"Stay here?" he parroted, mulling it over. "It is true that you cannot harm me. What can one man to do a desert, even when armed with a spade? You may stay, but," he paused, looking over the pair of outsiders and the way that Valdis' fingers played in the boy's hair in particular. "I do not like to be touched, so much," he carried on. "Especially not the hair. This is a sacred thing to our people, yes?" His hand reached up to pat the side of the blue cloth wrapped around his head. "So stay close, but not too close. You, will you stay too?" he asked, turning his attention to Valdis, now.

EILIF -

A small silence hung in the air as Valdis carried on her slow and careful weaving. Eilif felt the shift in her body as she looked down to Urd; and he heard, through her next thoughtful breath, the smile he'd committed to memory. He could imagine the creases at the corners of her eyes.

"No," she answered softly. "It was good to have come. It's been a salve to have seen you, and I hope to visit again on the journey to the Capital." Her fingers came to Eilif's temples, then, to tuck his short, erratic locks behind his ears. "But I've brought my own little flock to this place, and now I must see them to a ship home." The apprentices. Yes; even if the Duke would extend his hospitality to the girls, they would wither so far from the mountains if left alone.

The witch didn't need the suggestion of Mother's fingertips at his jaw to tilt his head back. Her lips on his forehead felt hot and cold at once. Was this good, to be left alone among the Urdai? Was it right?

There was, of course, no time to work out an answer. Only a chill at his back and the sound of her feet in the sand. His own hands fell beside him, gripping the log as if sitting on it wasn't quite enough to prove it was there, and he shifted very slightly away from Urd. He was wary of touch, now. Imagine some accidental bump...? He would have to memorize the landscape of this place quickly.

"Thank you," he muttered, finally. Again, a little stronger, to let his gratitude warm the dark: "Thank you." His body would take some time to register the safety of this place, too far for him to inflict himself on Cobra and Sigvard and too far for them to inflict themselves on him. In the meantime, he would distract himself with simple curiosity. "You spoke of memories, before," he began delicately. "Memories of home, you said. And these things come to you when you are dreaming...? When you are alone, and without Keht?"

URD -

Urd gave one slow, single nod as he considered the woman's words. It was... odd, to have to take things at face value, these days. Yet this young ones had not set foot into his desert, so their existence was only a guess to him. Still, there was no reason not to trust her, even if she was too heavy-handed with those in her care. Sometimes heavy-handedness was just the way of things. That, Urd did know.

"We will go near to the Capital also, but we will not enter its walls. It is a cursed place for us, now. Perhaps later in life, we will meet you at the mountain pass above the ancient city. I am hopeful we will return there in your lifetime." The chief gave a gentle smile.

The repeated thanks puzzled the man somewhat, but he was too old to worry himself about it. Leaning back on his hands, he let the lids of his golden eyes grow heavy, gazing at the flames without much focus. "Yes," he murmured. "I have lived a very long life, so there is a lot to remember. But some memories are stronger than others. It can be difficult to think of home on any other day than the one when the city burned and we were cast out into the desert. That is one of the reasons why I wish to see Keht, alone, and close. He is able to help me see more beautiful aspects of the life we once had."

  
EILIF -

Of all the things Urd had said, it was this that Eilif found most alien. It seemed impossible for such an ancient thing, a mythical thing, to feel something like nostalgia—to have lived through generations, to understand the magnitude of time, and still to speak with such sentimentality and bittersweet yearning. The witch didn't know what to make of it. It didn't help matters that he had never known a love like the one felt by Urd for Keht; nor the one felt by Sigvard for Cobra, nor so much as a man for his dog.

He hoped his naivety didn't carry in his voice. "It will take some doing to get him alone, I think," he murmured. "I was there when he asked to see you." It felt as though it had been weeks since sitting in the library, watching the world swallowed up by blackness and a hundred questions. "The Northlander said he would not leave Cobra's side without the man's blessing."

URD -

Urd hummed at the boy's musings, rising gracefully from the log where he sat and turning back towards the Navanese palace. Reaching out with one long-fingered hand, he carefully guided the waif to follow him and he returned (more or less) to the place where he had been kneeling so often for the past fortnight. "I cannot begrudge him this," he murmured easily, gently digging his toes into the sand. "It is fitting that the pair of them are so close. It echoes a closeness from long ago, although it has taken a very different form now." A chuckle as he sank to his knees in the sand, and then a sigh as he relaxed on his haunches.

"Everything will happen in time, Eilif," he said dreamily. "Sometimes all there is to do is wait."


	19. A Fine Farewell

COBRA -

 

The sun still shone hot in the golden hours of the afternoon and Cobra could taste the sweat from his own skin when he licked his lips. Teeth sunk into the plump flesh of his bottom lip as the visions Keht had pestered him with still played across his mind. Squirming snakes, shifting sands. Huffing, and growing impatient with the trouble his larger lover had on the sands, the slave pulled at fabric of his coverall as though it might invite nonexistent breeze onto his skin.

 

"I want to fuck," he announced breathlessly, looking over his shoulder at the man with heavy-lidded eyes. "Let our last night here be fucking, Sigvard, where we can wash the muck away before resigning ourselves to that godforsaken desert." To holiness; to subjugation, these things he added unspoken in his mind. The plan was present himself as a slave, after all. All the comforts of simplicity he'd grown accustomed to whilst basking in the glow of Hamad's negligence could no longer be taken for granted. Irfan would have already seen to it that the caravan was packed with his finest things, he was sure. 

 

Huffing again, the shorter man reached back to take the Northlander's hand as thought he could speed up their progress towards the edge of the sands. Mercifully, the uneven ground ebbed away to a solid limestone road as they grew closer to the city walls. Cobra's hand squeezed Sigvard's tightly as the thought occurred to him. "Shall we take Prialilly?" he asked in all seriousness, though his voice was rough around the edges. "Would that be better, or would it be better with nothing?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

Unused to the sands, but at least used to being unused, Sigvard had mostly amused himself with the picture of his godling forging ahead as though the universe wasn't moving around him quite quick enough. Vicious little thing. A grin pushed the apples of his cheeks out of shadow and into the baking sun, but he didn't mind it; his broad, naked back was red and stinging already from the day's outing. Maybe he would be as brown as Irfan by the time they reached the Capital. Maybe Irfan would be even browner.

 

Prialilly. The picture of Cobra spilling from his lap onto Hamad's fine floor, writhing, crying senseless. A flush came to his skin, and all the places that stark shadows had cooled were warm again.

 

A hoarse noise caught in his dry throat was the man's first answer. His second was a sharp tug. Back on sensible terrain again, it was as easy as instinct to lean his weight away from his little master, to open his arms wide, to bend at the waist, to catch the southerner's off-kilter body and haul him up over his shoulder like a sack of so much flour. Another heave for good measure, his thick arm coming 'round the backs of his thighs.

 

"I want to fuck you sober, first," he announced. Turning his cheek into the plump flesh at Cobra's hip, he bit at it, cotton and all, to make some point or another. "Then we can enjoy your poisons." And wine, he thought, and figs. His free hand had come to his lover's legs, thick fingers tucked between, wandering north in slow purpose until they just traced the cleft of his ass. Close, now, to the promise of the gate, and the gardens beyond. Here, it occurred to him: "Where does Hamad put his favourite guests...? Which is his finest room? We should start there."

 

COBRA -

 

Of all things, he hadn't expected this, but he supposed he should have. Caught off guard, Cobra looked back for one moment and in the next he was hauled over the man's broad shoulder again, for the umpteenth time, like a sack of potatoes; a bride; a conquest. Snarling, the furious little god kicked his feet in the air, closed fists pounding on pinkened skin. Gritting his teeth, he regarded the sun-kissed (who was he kidding? sunburned; the fool) skin for one seething moment. Didn't have enough malice in him to bite and scratch, he decided. Still, to splay his fingers and grab the fat around the man's shoulder blades and  _ squeeze _ , dragging his hands roughly over the tender flesh with an unkind friction... yes, fitting.

 

Much like  his namesake, Cobra hissed at the suggestion, still squirming to get down. "You don't know the way," he scolded, wriggling. "I could say the door with the boat, but you wouldn't know!" A smaller version of Hamad's own quarters, more or less. Far less echoing space but still the same pillars and billowing white drapes that the Lord fancied. White marble tiles and sandstone floors, to boot. It could be blinding when the afternoon sun came in from the balcony at just the right angle, but then again, perhaps that was the point. Still, it was nearing dusk now, so no matter. 

 

Using the man's flesh as handholds, the slave pushed himself upright, arching the small of his back enough to sneer down at his lover. "You think Hamad will care that you have spoiled some of his guest rooms?" he scoffed. "You underestimate his wealth. I have never seen him jealous; not once, ever. Men like that are dangerous. And I do not know how long this fear of Keht will last, either."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The shadow of the gate claimed their bodies whole, and still it couldn't smother the light in Sigvard's eyes as he marveled upward at his furious little lover. His grip hadn't relented. He'd suffered that tame vengeance on his back  _ deliciously _ , with a bark and a hungry coo, and he would happily suffer more.

 

But things would be clearer, closer. "It's not my aim to make Hamad jealous," he murmured, and at last he loosened his embrace just enough, just for a moment, to let the slip of gravity jolt Cobra's body some inches downward. Fine, then; less like a sack, more like a child, chest-to-chest and with the soldier's wide hands beneath each thigh. Supple, still, in spite of the little beast's insistent fasting. Thick fingers squeezed the flesh of him.

 

Before the southerner could imagine the thrill of scratching out his eyes, he nipped at his chin. His lips were gentler there. "When we're stuck in the desert, I want to imagine your body in a dozen fine places," he explained, lowly.  _ Closer _ , pulling him closer, pushing his wide body into the space between those legs. "You understand?"

 

COBRA -

 

The little god's breath hitched as his body dropped an inch, taking his heart along with it. Drawing a deep breath through gritted teeth, he laced his fingers together behind Sigvard's thick neck and held himself upright that way. The explanation was a shock to him; he wasn't sure when he had gotten the idea in his head that the finery was less impressive to Sigvard; that it was soft and weak and not at all a thing of a warrior-god's choosing. Or perhaps he himself had simply grown wary of it, after those terrible visions of the bejeweled kingslave were put in his head.

 

"You'll see me in fine things soon enough," he murmured, the words stealing the breath from the space between them. Fear almost took him but he forced out a chuckle. Funny! Yes, it was funny to him now; that  this barbarian would be so infatuated with finery. He squeezed his fingers together and pulled himself closer to the man, stealing a brief, rough kiss. "I can dress up for you, if you like," he purred, breath suddenly hot and heavy at the blond's ear. "The jewels will be on the caravan, but they won't take pearls to the Capital. What good are ocean treasures to fire worshippers?" Smirking, he rubbed his cheek against the scruff of the man's beard. "Or is it just my body you are after?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

"Dress up for me," Sigvard echoed, low words tumbling among a gravelly hum in his throat.  _ Pearls _ . He'd never seen pearls, he didn't think. He'd seen gold and silver and glass beads and jewels, yes, many jewels, in the halls of lords, and sewn into witches' robes, and spilling from little chests won from raiding. They were pretty. They were useful. But most of all they were something other than the arrangement of coveralls Cobra had been wearing for weeks and weeks. His fingers twisted up in this one now, threatening to tear it away from naked flesh.

 

He was becoming impatient. It showed in his gait, half-distracted, as if considering stopping there to enjoy each other on the floor in the middle of the hall; it showed in his hungry kisses, suckling at his plump lips,  _ biting _ them, in some confused attempt to tangle their bodies closer. Those curls, longer and longer, whisked his flushing cheeks.

 

" _ Cobra, _ " he breathed, ragged. His hands were useless like this. One arm circled beneath his ass, the other 'round his back, pulling pointlessly at his damned garment and dragging blunt fingernails down the length of his ribs. Every breath came through parted lips, now. Each one backed with the sound of a grin, wider and wider. "My little love." A laugh rumbled somewhere deep in his belly, his steps slowing, as he came to a new corridor; a long stretch left of them, a long stretch right. "I don't know the way."

 

COBRA -

 

He heard the hunger in the man's voice, the ruble in his throat. He tittered, the laughter quickly smothered by fast and insistent kisses. He returned some of them, then spurned others as the opportunity to wriggle free finally arose. Silly Sigvard didn't know the way. To be fair, the pristine, marble walls of Hamad's palace could be confusing. The trick was in the tiles; the shapes changed from corridor to corridor. too difficult to explain to a horny barbarian. A wicked smile curved the deity's lips as he slid down the man's body, cruelly close, one hand even finding his cock bulging through his trousers and giving it a brief squeeze.

 

"To my room, then," he purred, taking one of Sig's hands to lead the way. "Follow me".

 

Cobra's room looked as though it had been neatly gutted, insofar as a room with so many contents  _ could _ be noticeably decimated. A great wealth of the clothes and trinkets were missing from the wardrobe, no doubt packed away in their new home on the caravan. Even some of his poisons had been pilfered; Irfan had been busy. No matter now. Cobra slunk past the lot of them and flipped open the lid on one of a half dozen jewelery chests remaining. It was groaning with pearls and clear crystals of all types; even diamonds. Hamad had always seemed to take the approach of having so many trinkets in the room that they almost seemed devalued, clustered together like this. 

 

The half-circlet lined with pearls felt more pretty when it was separate, pulling his long hair back from his forehead. He turned to the man with a smile, slowly pulling at the string that held his coverall fastened behind his neck.

 

"Strip," he ordered sweetly, just as the saffron fabric fell to pool low around his hips, exposing just a hint of the cleft of his ass. Cobra turned away from the man again, looking down to carefully unscrew one the plain bearings from the studs in his nipples. The bars would stay, but either end would shortly be hanging a golden filigree dotted with more of the ocean's treasures, joined by a fine gold chain. 

 

SIGVARD -

 

If the room was emptier, Sigvard didn't notice. His eyes were fixed on that dark thing, watching his easy movements, catching the long shadows that fell from his shoulders in brilliant sunset. "Pretty," he mused, mostly to himself. More than merely 'pretty,' he thought, but he didn't know a better word for it in the common tongue. " _ Iva _ ." Better. In the language of his homeland, this was something like relief. Like coming to a secret lake where even the air was still and you could see all the way to the bottom.

 

Following in Cobra's wake, he stopped just short of peeking at whatever decoration was chiming at his chest—just short, he imagined, of some fine punishment. There was the glimmer of gold in sunlight. The order to strip. Protest was limited to a whine at the back of his throat before he thought better of that, too: It had been agonizing to be separate from his lover's body for the long walk here, and it would be worse for the long walk to the door with the boat, and perhaps it was a better idea after all to start in these quarters and work their way finer and finer.

 

So he tucked his thumbs into the waistband of his trousers, and bent to shuck them off. Closer, now. Warmth drifted off Cobra's body and stung at his skin like sparks from a fire. Ghost-light, as if not to disturb the southerner's careful work, his calloused fingertips found a place at his dusky hips and pushed gingerly between fabric and flesh. He dropped his gaze to watch the small space between them, where his prick wagged aching and heavy and hungry for touch, and blew a thin, cool breath down the length of his lover's spine. A small tug and the coverall was a puddle on the floor.

 

"You should be like this always," he murmured, marveling at the light and shadow of their bodies, tracing fingertips along the curve of Cobra's plump ass. "You wear nakedness in the way men wear war paint."

 

COBRA -

 

Dusky fingers made nimble work of the barbells in his nipples; he'd done this a thousand times before, after all. Adding ornaments to his ears was even faster: the hoops served a dual purpose, easy to hang and clip an assortment of teardrop pearls to. Ears that burned at the quiet exclamation in Northern tongue. He understood it, after all, although it had been a long time since he had heard such a thing.

 

"You're not the first to say this," he murmured, pausing in the act of pulling a string of pearls from the jewelery box. "But I like it better coming from you." Smirking, he let one hand slip away, reaching back to grip the base of Sig's bobbing manhood. Just one stroke, thumb caressing the tip with a parting twist, then the slave returned to his work. The smirk was still wide on his lips as he looped the fine belt of pearls around his waist, the strings falling in scalloped sections held together by gold clasps. His own cock rose up to meet the treasures, and he ran a thoughtful finger down the ladder of golden barbells on its underside. No extra decoration needed there, he thought. Sigvard would just break it. Even now he, he shivered at his lovers breath down his spine. Even now, his back arched for him.

 

"Perhaps I will," he replied breathlessly. Pants, if the gossamer legsleeves could be called such, were supposed to attach to the belt, but damn them right now. "I don't belive desert gods have much need for clothes." Pressing back into the man's touch with a deep furrow in his brow, he pulled one of Sigvard's hands around to his belly with a hum; keening, demanding to be touched. He squirmed, but still he reached for a pot of white make up, flicking off the lid and dipping his thumb into the jar.

 

"I love you," he purred, spreading the white over his plump bottom lip in a daze. Pressing them together completed the paint and he wiped off the remains on each eyelid. "I want you, Sigvard." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

They were there and gone again. Those words, like the slip of a breeze under that sweltering desert sun, had come and kissed every inch of Sigvard's naked body—only to suddenly leave him, caught achingly between gratitude and yearning. His breath fell hot from his lungs in a shiver where he'd been nursing at his lover's throat. Even now, he felt those words could slip through his fingers; his useless fingers, forgetting their purpose, drifting away from those fine ornaments, away from where they'd dug into the meat of his hip. Thick arms circled Cobra's waist, tighter and tighter as his own body curled around him.

 

The soldier tucked his nose into dark curls, lips and teeth catching gently at the shell of his ear. His whisper was scarcely backed with breath. "To hear you say it." He'd known it. Of course he'd known it. He rocked their bodies forward, just enough to feel the weight of the southerner's body in his embrace, and back again. He'd known it, and still—"To hear you say the words." Did he understand...? A thousand miles stranded from everything he knew, he'd never been made to feel this peace, this purpose.

 

He was flushed, now. A soft kiss to Cobra's ear was followed by another to the skin below it, all ruddy from his earlier suckling. Heavy arms slackened. Blunt fingertips drew lines on dark skin, seeking out all those delicious places to carry on his worship.

 

His gaze fell to what he could see of glinting treasures, and his low voice followed. "You will not be alone." Catching the chain slung across his chest with a hooked thumb, he traced along until he found the soft bud of his nipple and rolled it, marveling, against the barbell that pierced it. "As long as I breathe." Harder and harder now to manage it. As another sway forward pushed his fat prick into the small of his lover's back, greedy hands spread wide over Cobra's lithe body, counting ribs, tangling in pearls. "Let me look at you," he huffed, "and you, you look at me."

 

COBRA -

 

He froze for a moment, Sigvard's breath huffing at his ear. It dawned on Cobra that he'd never said the words out loud before: the other times were merely thoughts, and hazy memories of sweet memories must have been those of Keht's past getting confused with his own. His skin was light enough to show the pink in his cheeks as his heart picked up pace in his chest, as his breath hitched and his body arched in symphony with Sigvard's urgent touches. 

 

"Ch-cherish it, then," he muttered, the reply quieter than he meant it to be. Gasping, he turned on his heel, barely able to stand the handsome idiot's gaze. So, he didn't, despite his lover's request. Grabbing the scruff of the man's beard, he pulled him down to his level and into a deep kiss that gave Sig's lips some paint of their own. His other hand found purchase on the man's meaty pectoral muscle, squeezing with a breathless grimace as he broke away.

 

"You do this to me on purpose," he accused, reaching down and giving his own cock an idle pump as his blue eyes danced around the bedroom. Oil, where was the fucking oil? If Irfan had packed it all away, there would be hell to pay. Finally, the little god met his lover's gaze, his white lipstick already smeared and a mix of arousal and the faintest hint apprehension in his eyes. "Does it excite you, to make me love you?"

 

The threat was weak; the smirk on one side of his lips gave him away. His eyes darted away again, reaching back to squeeze one of his ample buttocks with a furrow in his brow. "We need oil," he muttered, pushing the man back towards the direction of the cabinet. "I need you."

 

SIGVARD -

 

A look of wicked delight was enough to answer his lover’s pointless question, and Cobra seemed to know it, going on now about  _ oil _ and shoving him along. Half-obedient, a giggling Sigvard caught the wrist of the hand that pushed him, and then the other, and pulled the little thing into a hungry kiss even as he staggered back towards the pillaged arrangement of vials. His ass collided with it first; his back a moment later. He heard the near-violent rattling, and felt the biting punishment for his carelessness, which he felt was hardly fair, because none of them had shattered.

 

Between the tint and the select few letters he’d memorized so far, he could recognize some of tinctures by sight these days—a glance over his shoulder caught Orangeblossom, he thought, and at his hip was Prialilly. He plucked both from their spots. He would have liked some Menthol, too, like that first night; but in his practice, he’d thrice mixed it up with Hemlock, and it wasn’t worth it to him now to risk enduring the lesson again.

 

Clutching the two vials in his fist, he kept them well away from his needy godling. He was predictably graceless in pushing Cobra back, in turn, towards the mess of cushions that made up their bed—his lips were suddenly empty, a foot between them, enough to see every glimmering ornament.

 

“Pearls,” he murmured thickly, closing the gap but for a hand twining in that fine belt and so deciding: “I like pearls.” Glistening on his lover’s chest and hips, they looked like cum, or some fine foreign dessert. He wanted to taste them. So he tangled their legs, and fell into that heap of softness with his body a cage above Cobra’s, and pushed his lips against hot skin in a slow and delicious hunt for each little stone.

 

COBRA -

 

Cobra's heart skipped when his arms were grabbed, and suddenly he found himself being dragged across the room, mind lost in a lusty haze of lips and tongues and body heat. He startled when they collided with the cabinet, the valuable vials within rattling dangerously. He introduced his teeth to the man's lip with a grunt, fussing and fighting to get his hands free to dig his fingers into the soft flesh at the man's sides. Making handles out of them, he hauled him closer, nose bumping up under the man's jaw to expose his throat. No sooner had he parted his lips, however, did he spy the vials in the Northlander's hand. He reached for them immediately, only to be knocked back.

 

"You!" he cursed, eyes darting between the oils and Sigvard's rapt gaze. Breathing quickly, he took a wary step back before the man's foot caught behind his ankle and he was sent tumbling back into a heap of cushions. Writhing, he swore as he found the vials pinned against the mattress by Sig's splayed palm. Hands balling into helpless fists, a soft moan diffused his fussing as wet, suckling lips roamed over his nipple, followed by the tip of a skilled tongue. He arched his back at that, feet finding purchase on the mattress so he could better push up into the attentions. 

 

"Sigvard," he croaked, the heat of his cock pressing up against the man's belly. "Fuck me!"

 

SIGVARD -

 

The Northlander’s brows arched, his gaze lifting to that naked, straining throat. His teeth tugged the erect little bud a half-inch, then released it. “Shh-shh,” his hot breath fell, to Cobra’s chest, to his collarbone, to his chin and to his lips, finally, before taking them in a sweet and nursing kiss that was meant to temper the squirming thing.

 

There was the sweep of skin on skin as his wide hands—vials and all—found Cobra’s taut thighs and rucked them up his waiting lap. He’d had something in mind to do; but pushing himself up to sit on his heels, he forgot everything but the full picture of the ornamented little creature laid out in the cushions below. All his breath left him. Eyes tracked every rolling muscle in that perfect body, and every glistening stone.

 

_ Oil, oil, _ yes, he remembered, marvelling now at Cobra’s studded prick. Uncorking the Orangeblossom with his teeth, he poured it like honey over his lover’s cock and balls and puckering hole; making a mess, too, of his stomach and thighs in his clumsy generosity. Having drained the vial by half, he let the both of them fall to the bed. As one broad palm hooked into the southerner’s hip, the other caught his slick shaft, pushing his thumb against the base of the ladder and climbing rung by rung by rung. He was a bastard. He knew it. He delighted in it. But he was desperate, too, and so his calloused fingertips quit their teasing, and drifted down to nose at Cobra’s tight ring.

 

Sigvard’s body closed over his little god’s, finding his lips again, his own erect nipples brushing warm skin, catching jewelry. When one thick digit pushed into the slave’s needy cunt, he stole Cobra’s breath for himself. His empty arm was around him, then, pulling him close. “Tell me again,” he purred, mindless. His finger was knuckle-deep, tracing his walls, seeking his prostate, and now joined eagerly by the next to work him open for his heavy, waiting prick. “I love you. Tell me again.”

 

COBRA -

 

The little deity fussed through the kiss, for he had always been difficult to temper. Fussed, yes, but with a new fury; grabbing hands burying themselves in Sigvard's blond tresses, keeping him close, humming with complaint at everything and nothing all at once. The sound intensified when the kiss was taken away. Robbed, the brunette gave a grunt as he was dragged down the mattress, thick thighs spread astride the Northlander's waist. Panting in a way that made his taut, bejewelled stomach rise and fall in a steady motion, it was all he could do to stare up at the man with flushed cheeks, having half a mind to scorn him and another half to say nothing. A beat passed and he finally tore his gaze away, distracted by the movement of the vial.

 

"Yes." the word pushed out of him with a grateful huff, hips squirming at the offering of the vial's contents which was very welcome, indeed. It was Sig's strong fingers, somehow how so rough yet careful, that finally made the furrow fade out of Cobra's brow. His expression melted as his mouth formed a soft 'O', greeting his lover's mouth with a loving coo the second time around. Wrists slipped over the barbarian's broad shoulders and then palms snaked down the expanse of his back, massaging the welts he'd put there earlier.

 

His lips curled with a knowing smirk. "I love you," the first breathless affirmation came easily, but the gleam in his eyes warned of mischief. "Does it please you to hear me say it? Perhaps when you have become wild like an animal, I will train you with it, like a dog." Even with two thick fingers spreading him open, the little slave let out a snicker, the memory of their first night together lingering in his mind. "Mutt," he added for good measure, rolling his hips expectantly. "Give me your cock." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Every little word shot a thrill through the warrior’s body;  _ love _ , yes, and  _ mutt _ , and most of all the wicked smile that strung it all together. He caught it with his own, biting at Cobra’s plump lips and grunting to signal his pleasure. He delighted in this. He missed it—no Keht, no Urd, only the simplicity of his god’s sweet wrath and the imaginings of how he might serve him.

 

The oaf’s thick arm, curled beneath the southerner, slid upward now to tangle his hand in dark hair and seize it in a fist. His thrusting fingers emptied him; stole his heat and the oil to tug at his own prick. “A dog,” he echoed lowly, distracted in the hunt for the soft flesh beneath the corner of his lover’s jaw, where he kissed and suckled to bruise him. Breaking for a ragged breath, and murmurs of yearning: “Let me tear out the throats of your enemies, let me slaughter them all.” A nip to tender skin made his point for him; a wolfish grin did better. “This king—“

 

Nosing his cockhead at the man’s tight ring, the half-formed thought vanished to nothing. His body curled tighter around him, his fist gripped harder, his teeth dragged lines into his skin as he sunk inch after delicious inch of his girth into his lover’s perfect cunt.

 

He’d been starved of this. It had been so long, and his body ached for fucking as it did for killing, and he was  _ animal _ , yes, in jagged thrusts without rhythm and coos of nonsense huffed at Cobra’s ear. His free hand caught the slave’s hip, thick fingers digging into the meat of him and nearly tugging that pretty belt apart. He held him firm as he found his pace, easing off  _ frantic _ , slower, slower, planting a palm in the cushions to push himself up to see and to hear all the pleasures he could wring from that little thing beneath as he drove himself to the hilt.

 

COBRA -

 

His body arched beneath the man's; luxuriant, smug, sated. At this talk of throats, though, at the word 'king', Cobra's vivid blue eyes opened with a hard sort of glare made all the more  _ Cobra _ -esque by the manic grin that accompanied it as the barbarian's cock began to push into him. Unlike his hulking lover from the North, the little deity held onto his spite even as he huffed and spread his thighs wider as though that might invite more of Sig's prick inside him. The fire in his blue eyes didn't diminish even as he moaned, curling fingers around a scruff of blond beard and pulling the man's face close again, deciding he was very fond of the move.

 

"No enemy of mine," he purred, breath heavy with the feeling of fullness. "Keht's, Keht's, but not mine. There are very few of mine left alive, silly mutt," he croaked, chuckling as he released the beard. He left the name  _ Hamad _ unspoken, knowing the trouble it could cause them if Sigvard got it into his head to slaughter the Duke before they took their leave on this grand mission. The man seemed suspiciously cowed, for now, after all; ever since witnessing Keht's presence he had made himself sparse to the court and everyone else except a handful of guests. So be it, Cobra thought: Hamad could rot in his chambers peacefully if it meant that he and Sigvard would be undisturbed.

 

Grimacing at the fingers digging into his hip, not out of any concern for the trinkets that adorned him but because Sig's cock was pressing right up against his prostate. Grunting, his expression softened again, his gold-studded prick laying flat and achingly hard against the expanse of his belly. Seeing how the man looked down at him expectantly, the brunet lifted a hand to his face and bit down on heel of his thumb, wickedly denying him the sounds he wanted. Still, he could not stop his ragged, breathing, nor the heavy rise and fall of his chest as his breath huffed out through grit teeth. A keening mewl mixed with a chuckle in his throat, his eyes flickering shut and opening again in time with the slow, deep thrusts. When he did make eye contact, it was goading: his lips curled when he pulled his hand away to reveal two hand-moons impressed in the flesh. 

 

"If you want to watch me," he purred, muscles milking the man's prick, "then lay on your back."

  
  


SIGVARD -

 

The name of that ancient creature threatened to spoil the fun, all complicated as it was. To Sigvard, it was simple: The king and his crystalline slave were in the way of his god’s ascent, of ridding that spirit from his perfect body or otherwise making an army of the Urdai with which to conquer this dreaded place. Hamad, too, was already in his mind—if the fool, with his ass on his new throne, didn’t think to reward them for it with freedom and power and ... and  _ pearls _ , many many pearls, he wouldn’t keep his seat for long.

 

So he shook his head, now that it was given back to him, and put out of his mind thinking about all those men at a time like this. Hesitation showed in his body. More, with a little frown, when the pretty bastard wouldn’t show him all he was working for.

 

He shifted his weight from palm to elbow, closer, blue eyes fixed hotly on blue in the fraction of space between them. The move had said it; he said it anyway. “No.” Rocking hips searched for that place again, the place that made Cobra’s expression go empty,  _ there _ , that place, and pushed his fat prick against it again and again and again. “I don’t want to watch you fuck yourself,” he muttered, the sound of amusement and wonder coming through his low voice. The point was a bit lost when his lids half-closed, when he dipped his head to push soft kisses against his cheeks and brow, but he carried on. “I want to watch what I do to you.”

 

His vice-grip abandoned its place at Cobra’s hip, finding instead his ornamented prick and dragging calloused fingertips aimlessly up and down the ladder of piercings. Even collecting it, then, his strokes were slow, teasing, his thumb circling the head in lazy purpose. “You trust me, yes?” His gaze found his lover’s again. “Let me see.”

 

COBRA -

 

The denial came like a slap to the face, as denial often did with the hot-tempered slave. What stung more so was that Sigvard could spot his bluff; the facade, the performance of it all. He was supposed to be a better actor than this, and it was worrisome considering the performance of a lifetime he would have to give at then Capital. Then again, Sigvard had seen parts of Cobra that no man left alive had witnessed. His fear, his anguish. The slave's heart skipped a beat as the gravity of just how much of himself he had revealed to the man began to weigh down on him.

 

_ I love you _ .

 

His bottom lip pulled back to expose teeth, but whatever words could describe his frantic mix of outrage, pleasure, insecurity and yes, more pleasure (god, even now those rough hands coaxed a new pearl at the tip of his cock)... they never came. His lip fell slack and simply trembled, the first sound coming as a hiccup that could not be contained. Hands wrung in the air as the little deity wrestled mentally with Sigvard's ministrations, finally yielding with a short, whimpering moan. More gasping, more mewling after that: there was a deep furrow in the man's brow when he managed to open his eyes again, his own threatening to well with tears from the sheer feeling of it.

 

"You ask a lot of me," he whispered, the accusation underscored by a sharp hitch in breath and a husky cry as Sigvard's cock sent another jolt of pleasure up through his stomach. "S-sigvard!" 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard’s dancing eyes caught it all; every little tension that knitted the muscles of his lover’s face, every flush, every unsaid word that fell from empty lips. His curiosity was hunger. It was fear, too, or something like it; heavy,  _ heady _ , making his skin hot and his breath hotter and so he couldn’t keep himself straight. His forehead rocked against the other’s, and still, he kept watching. He nodded. “Yes,” his simple answer, whispered in kind, like it was some beautiful thing to ask so much.

 

His empty palm was useless among fine cushions, and so it curled beneath the back of Cobra’s head, keeping him there, keeping him close, so that he could dip his chin and suckle away the last of that white paint. He closed his eyes, now. Leaving room for all those noises, for his name, he tucked his nose into the slave’s hair and ground his hips against his plush ass, giving himself away to pleasure that licked at his spine and made his muscles roll beneath his skin.

 

His body coiled tighter. His fist, too, pumping quick strokes as his rutting hips made faint music in those chains and the clap of flesh on flesh. More—an impatient breath forced from his lungs as he slowed again for the sake of  _ more _ , more of his god’s body, abandoning his prick only for a moment to pull the slave’s leg to brace against his own chest. His breaths were jagged, and worse when he tried to make words of them. “Pretty thing.” Teeth traced the shell of Cobra’s ear, tempted. “Put your hands on me. Hold on to me.”

 

COBRA -

 

A choked cry, eyes dewy, now; Cobra found himself torn between indignation and begging, between cursing and pleading. A sheen of sweat coated the skin that faced this hulking furnace of a man, a man whose face he wanted to kiss and slap and hold forever all at once. Was this trepidation what Sigvard felt, he wondered? Did Sigvard love him first? Like a fool, yes, he was sure of it. The hands, still wringing... Sigvard didn't know what he was asking for. His hands dragged down the man's pink sides with vengeance, taking up hold on the meaty flesh at his back, beneath the ribcage. And yet still, he contained himself, held himself back, for he loved the stupid brute. Loved him enough to wish him to bleed but not see it through. 

 

It was too hard to hang on to malice with a head made cloudy by the ebb and flow of fucking. Each thrust of Sigvard's fat cock dragged over a spot that made his balls twitch, and the hand pumping at his cock soon grew slick with shiny precum. And Cobra... Cobra was a vision of flushed cheeks and disheveled hair, of permanently parted lips and furrowed brow, panting, moaning. Animalistic. Fingernails dragged up the man's shoulderblades and made handles of Sigvard's ears, pulling him down with a grunt of determination. A deep and forceful kiss, as desperate to cum as he was to gag himself in the act. The sudden lack of air made his body spasm, his muscles clamping down tight on Sig's prick.

 

SIGVARD -

 

The warrior quickly recognized breathlessness, the sudden urgency to make good on all this—the teasing, the pearls, his god’s sweet gifts to him—before he lost his mind. Or after. He couldn’t be sure. Jerking hips lost their practice, their purpose; his body worked frantic with the instinct of fucking, burying himself to the hilt again and again and again in his lover’s tight cunt as the hum of pleasure crept through every nerve. His lungs burned. His tongue, tasting copper, chased Cobra’s, chased it  _ violently _ , as though he could give him breath.

 

Tension ripped up his back like a flame, crushing the air from his lungs in a whimpering groan, making him cling to his lover’s body, having him tremble fiercely in a perfect moment that seemed all at once to go on and on and to flood from his veins far too quick. Parting from the slave’s lips, cheek to cheek, he heaved grateful breaths; his hips shoved painfully into the meat of Cobra’s ass, his surging prick emptying the last of him.

 

He wanted to go boneless. There was the half-thought of crushing the poor thing, and then, opening his eyes to slivers, something else. So he suffered the burden of keeping himself up as he let his godling’s tangled body go slack, and pulled his cock free with a slip of breath. He saw the ruddy stain in the slave’s cheeks, and the way his own huffing made sweat-slicked curls dance and cling to his skin.

 

He saw tears, too. In a clumsy attempt at delicateness, he pushed his lips against Cobra’s left eyelid, and then the right. Quiet words came out strange with hoarseness. “My little love.” A swallow to moisten his throat. “It’s all right.” It wasn’t clear what he meant; he didn’t think it mattered. “You see?” His proof, all told, was a faint grin. “Isn’t it all right?”

 

COBRA -

 

His mouth gasped into nothing, for there was no air to be had between them, and with eyes closed, Cobra knew only sensation and motion, swooning as his consciousness began to slip into inky black. When he fell back into the cushions, his face was contorted in a perfect, silent scream. Then, the air again, like a man reborn after almost drowning, and then his screaming moans were heard chambers away.

 

His nubile chest was painted with cum; even now, as he whimpered and blinked up at Sigvard stupidly, head too foggy to make speech, he could feel his studded cock twitch and push our a final spurt as his orgasm ebbed again. Chest heaving with deep, grateful breaths, he managed a flicker of a frown and little more as Sigvard kissed at his tear-stained eyelids. Exposed, utterly; the cum may as well have been a magnifying glass right into his soul. And yet the urge to kill him, this voyeur, didn't come: in fact it seemed as though nothing had been as he expected, that night. Even when all breath had left him, he had been spared visions. He would puzzle over the meaning of this another time.

 

"Mutt," he huffed out the word, tiny and small, rolling over onto his side to make room on the mattress. "You aspire to fuck in many rooms, and then you go and do this to me on the first try." Groaning, he wiped a hand down his chest, collecting as much of the pearly mess as he could. "Clean it," he sniffed, holding the hand up over his shoulder with haughty expectation. "If you want to behave like such a beast."

 

SIGVARD -

 

Laid among the cushions, Sigvard kept an eye turned to Cobra—watching, with faint bemusement, as his lover hastily built up a wall around himself made of sharp words and derision. He understood it, and he didn’t at all. He was afraid of something, but what? To be seen like this? To be betrayed? Didn’t he understand by now that there was no light left in Sig’s life but  _ him _ , and to turn on him now would extinguish it...?

 

Maybe. Maybe not. It didn’t matter. His godling was putting such effort into distracting them both from the question, and the warrior would not dare spoil it for him. If he was meant to be a beast, so be it. He could play the part.

 

The pale and hulking thing shuffled closer, his arm circling the slave’s waist to pull him close so that his eager mouth could chase the offering. As though he were starving, as though it was dessert, he lapped dutifully at his little master’s palm, and suckled each dirtied finger from base to tip.

 

Left nursing at the salty-sour taste of his own tongue, he marveled at his work. Lowly: “Should I try not to do this to you?” Rhetorical. His embrace emptied, his wide palm now sweeping up the length of Cobra’s thigh. His fingers sought mischief. Finding the cleft of his ass, he probed for the mess of oil and his own cum, dragging fingertips past the southerner’s rosebud. “And should I clean this...?”  _ Mutt _ , like he’d said.  _ Beast _ , like he’d said, drawing his hand back up to his own lips to tidy it as he’d done the slave’s. There. Was that sufficient distraction?

 

“Let me take you to the baths,” he murmured, casting a glance down the length of their bodies towards the closet door. A long breath, remembering the abandoned prialily and the chore of rooting it out of the bed. “And your costume, and things. Then you can punish me how you like for this terrible thing I’ve done to you.”

  
  


COBRA -

 

Closing his eyes as he felt his lover's tongue lap at him palm, Cobra sighed and pressed his back against the warm wall of Sigvard's body. A smile twitched at his lips as the tongue tickled his fingertips, but it battled with the gravity of the Northlander's question.

 

"It's not--" he began, words muting in his throat as he felt fingers inside him again. With a faint grunt of complaint, he yielded, shifting his hips and letting the man take back some of his cum. The man's keenness for degradation would never fail to surprise him, although now that he dwelled on it more, perhaps the brute didn't consider the act degrading at all. 

 

Sniffing, he reached back for one of the man's hands, pulling his arm around his body like a blanket. "In a moment," he muttered, closing his eyes again. "I'm not going to punish you for this thing. It's not... so terrible, on the face of it, but inside me..." He faltered, searching for the words. Despite himself, his eyes cracked open again, staring without much focus at the rich pattern of tasseled cushions and ornate fabrics that surrounded them. 

 

"Most of my life has been a performance," he murmured, absent-mindedly stroking Sigvard's arm hair. "To fuck like this affects me more than you may think. That may fade, in time, but... I won't punish, you Sigvard." A beat passed, and the slave chuckled. "... So much easier to punish you because you are a glutton for it, in any case," he teased. 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Sigvard considered the words carefully, grateful at least that Cobra couldn’t see the twist in his brow and wonder what to make of it. He understood and he didn’t. The logic, yes, the natural conclusion; but he couldn’t even begin to fathom the years and years of suffering that had twisted the little thing’s insides in this way, much less the nature of the pain it gave him now. In his own life, after all, he’d been utterly free to make choice after foolish choice. He’d chosen to go into the woods; to flee it; to fight for lords, to raid for them, to win them treasures. Treasures like gold. Treasures like slaves of their own.

 

His embrace tightened, crushing the small and hollow darkness of that thought, and he pushed his lips against the man’s dusky shoulder. His voice there was a murmur. "I am glad to know a little more of you." He couldn't understand it, he couldn't make it right, but there was hope at least that Cobra trusted him to hear it.

 

"I want to know more of you," he continued the thought, his breathing coming easier, his fingertips counting his lover's ribs, "but there is so much I don't..." He shook his head, trying to convey the depths of the slave's anguish that was beyond his grasp. "I have hurt you without knowing, or knowing how, and I likely will again, I think." His idle hand wandered now to Cobra's, to twine their fingers. "Will you tell me when I do it? When it's too much. This costume—" It only now occurred to him. "These pearls and things. Is this too much?"

 

COBRA -

 

More of him; of Cobra. Was he even real? He wondered, sometimes. The revelation of Keht's presence inside him, of Keht's involvement, somehow in so many important events in his life... He wondered now what was left to show Sigvard of Cobra, and only Cobra. Gods, what was there that's wasn't hurt and anger?

 

The next laugh came genuine, and easily.  "The costume is as easy as breathing," he said, reaching back to caress his lover's cheek. It wasn't hard to follow Sigvard's trail of thought in that regard. "Don't worry yourself about that.  _ Ashi _ ." Tittering, he gently prised the man's hand off his chest and guided it down to his inner thigh. Turning his knee out, he lifted his leg high up into the air, pressing Sigvard's palm against the taut tendons at his groin.

 

"It was always the contortion that made them want to touch me," Cobra explained softly, grabbing his knee with a quiet grunt as he pulled his leg higher. "Perhaps they just wanted to understand the way my bones and muscles moved when it looked so impossible. If it was just that, I might have tolerated it. But then I grew older, and it was always this quest of how to fuck me, how to fill my throat when I was bent in such a way... It made me feel as though my body was not my own." slowly lowering his leg, he turned around in the mans' embrace and placed a kiss on Sig's cheek.

 

"It is hard for me to fuck in the same way that comes so naturally to you. The way I learned wasn't natural at all. Do you understand?"

 

SIGVARD -

 

The soldier's hand burned hot, his cheeks hotter, as he was made to touch in the way those men had done—to feel the impossible shift in muscle and bone that his lover now described to him. He remembered. As vivid as pain, the play of light and shadow stuck in his mind, and the smell of hay and feet. His breath was shallow, his body lax, letting himself be guided in this moment that was all at once grotesque and very sacred. Given only a glimpse of it, his stomach churned. How had Cobra managed years? What must he have felt, each night, when he was finally left alone?

 

Soft lips on his skin dragged his mind halfway back to present. There was a long silence before he recognized the question; his head was clouded now, working out how much and how little had changed. His god's body was still not his own. If not Keht, there was Hamad, and performances yet to come. When would he be free of it? How? Was this path the right one? Was he himself doing everything he could?

 

He mustered what he could in his dry mouth and swallowed, nodding, watching his lover earnestly. "Yes," he answered, hushed. "I understand." His body was ahead of his mind, shifting closer, twining their legs, spreading his palm wide at the top of Cobra's spine and washing downward. His brow pinched in a thought, then. "I want to make it easier."

 

A simpler problem to solve than the weight of the world, he realized, and the relief or the pitifulness of fixating on this small idea brought the light of hapless laughter to his face. "What makes it easier?" Hearing his own words, he felt the sting of familiarity: This wasn't so far from the negotiation of horny boyhood, the gentle coaxing he'd offer those pretty things who had all the eagerness in the world and none of the experience to match it. It was what he'd been asked, too, as soon as he'd had his first copper to spend in Alvsten. "What do you like? Of all the things we do alone—which are your favourites?"

 

COBRA -

 

Three words; three words was all it took to take the love that Cobra felt for Sigvard and add yet another measure still. Humming with gratitude, he nuzzled up against the man's beard, pressing butterfly kisses at the corners of his lips. More words came after that, and he heard them, though these were harder to piece together so quickly. Cracking open his blue eyes, he peered at the blond curiously, wondering what amused him so. It was the question that helped him understand. 

 

A quiet scoff of laughter, for the solution was so utterly, typically  _ Sigvard _ . Tutting, Cobra sat up, pulling at the brute's wrist to follow. "I like to bathe," he said, eyes creasing at the corners as he smiled. Gods, what a mess he was now, too; he could even feel the thin film of spit and lip paint that lightened the lower half of his jaw. As he led the larger man to wards the bathing chambers (adopting his carelessness for nudity in Hamad's halls) he pondered other things he liked.

"I like to fuck on Prialilly," he answered honestly. "That may not be what you wish to hear, but it helps me relax. You've heard me on it, I'm sure." His gaze drifted away to some far point down the hall as he recalled the tryst in Hamad's chambers. He'd been a mess that night, too. As much as he was looking forward to their bath, he was dreading the idea of the desert journey. "Mouths," he said vaguely, wrist drawing a circle in the air as he searched for the word (he was still tired, after all). "Better to use them on our journey. There's less of this... slickness," he grimaced, adjusting his gait as he felt the wetness of Sigvard's load at the cleft of his ass.

 

SIGVARD -

 

Prialilly. The wrinkle in Sigvard's nose was more of curiosity than anything else: They'd only fucked with it once before, and there had been so many other things at play in that fine room. Spite being one of them, if he remembered. Love, too. He couldn't work out what was all that and what was the tincture. He'd never been treated with it himself, after all; and he'd worked out by now, thanks to the likes of sleeper shark venom, that  _ dose _ could change everything about poison.

 

His meaty hand held the vial of Prialilly now, plucked from the cushions, and raised it to his nose. Cracking the cork, he smelled it, as if he might sniff out what Cobra found so lovely. But there was nothing but the scent of Orangeblossom, which stained his hands, and body, and the bedding where it had been tossed to drain. He'd have to experiment.

 

Mouths were more familiar. Having fallen behind a step—evidently incapable of smelling and walking—he lifted his gaze to the back of his little god's head, and cocked his own at his choice of words. Of course he'd resigned himself to a long trek of dick-sucking, but  _ pragmatism _ had hardly been the point of his question.

 

"Prialilly and mouths," he murmured, as if taking careful note. In the last steps before the bath opened wide around them, his eyes drew a line in the shape of Cobra's shoulderblade, his spine, his hip, and he raised an arm to follow it with calloused fingertips. "Tell me more." There was an echo to his voice, now, off the water and stone. "Not just me, then—" In all their frantic fucking, there had been very little of Prialilly and mouths, and so he had the glancing thought he'd had it backwards all this time. "Other men, too. Irfan. What do they do that you like?" Wading into the bathwater, he closed his fist against a rush of goosebumps prickling his skin. The vial, intact, he left at the water's edge.

 

"I would like to know it, all of it." He made a point of being earnest, remembering his jealousy, remembering the destruction it had wrought. "Would you tell me? Would you look at me—would you wash me as you do? And I will wash you."

 

COBRA -

 

He heard the  _ pop _ of the cork from the vial, glancing back at the man and recognising what he had in his hands. "It's scentless," he explained. "The herbalist dilutes it when he makes the tincture. To eat the flower itself is far more painful than pleasurable." Unbeknownst to Cobra, Sigvard had been entirely right with all his suspicions of dosage. 

 

The slave's face lit up at the sight of the water's surface, but his attention was pulled away again by his lover's questioning. He'd had a feeling that his simple answers weren't going to be enough to sate the big man's appetite. "Irfan," he sighed with fond memory, drifting towards the bath steps and descending. "I saw Irfan when he was utterly ruined; a wreck of despair. And it was the first time I saw such a thing and did not feel contempt, as I did at the circus. Instead I felt pity. Empathy. Irfan is special, for that." With a splash, he his the water hip-first, taking his time to wipe away the sticky cum from his chest and the lingering paint from his mouth before he stood on his own two feet again, water dripping from his ebony locks and down his dusky skin. 

 

"The thrill with Irfan had been the illicitness," he recalled. "This was when I was a new toy for Hamad, and he still paid attention to me. We fucked in secret places, sometimes with guards just a door away. I was good at staying quiet, after all. Of course," he sighed, swimming backwards until his back gently bumped the bath wall near where Sigvard lingered. He hopped up on the stone siding presenting his back to the man as he hooked dripping hair behind his ear. "Once Hamad stopped caring for what I did, the thrill faded. We didn't fuck nearly as much after than, and when we did, I think it was just for closeness. The comfort of another person who had shared such pain."

 

SIGVARD -

 

The warrior's body began to ache in the effort of following along this trail of thinking, his limbs heavy in spite of the water.

 

He wanted to understand. He was desperate to know what he could do, if he could do anything at all, to show his lover the intimacy and pleasure and giddy delight of fucking  _ naturally _ , as he'd said, in the way he'd never learned, in the way Sigvard had done to while away the winters in his homeland. He'd given his life and his body to the man, after all; he wanted to know what he could do with it to make Cobra forget, if only for a moment, the old instincts that had been baked into him in that circus. He wanted to know what he could do to make this hard thing just a little bit easier.

 

Prialilly and mouths were a start. He hung, too, on the idea of illicitness, until the southerner confessed that the thrill of it had come and gone. He was growing so terribly confused, and so terribly alone with it: He'd asked to be looked at and there was a back to him; he'd asked to be touched and there was only stone and water. It was strange, difficult, to hear ideas about closeness.

 

Grappling with Cobra's words, straining to find what direction he could tease from it, he leaned on the ritual of bathing, plucking up a rag from the bathside, and a dish of oily soap. His naked hand came first to his little god's shoulders, and the sudsy cloth followed it.

 

"I..." In his quiet duty of washing, his mouth had been reaching for the word, and now, having found it, he wasn't sure what came next. He marched on regardless, in stumbling uncertainty. "I do not have the same pain as you and Irfan." His was different. He'd learned that long ago. "I do not share that with you," he carried on, "like he does." And exhibitionism was tired by now, his lover said, and: "We have not done much with mouths and Prialilly." Months and months ago. Before Keht.

 

"Have I...?" He didn't know how to phrase it; that glancing thought that now consumed him. Of what Cobra had said he liked, there were things he had scarcely done, and things he couldn't do, and what did that mean for all they  _ had _ done and shared together? He frowned, watching his thumb drag the soapy rag down the ridge of the man's spine, and beneath the belt of pearls. The start and stop of his shallow breath, the effort of working out the words, was audible. "Have I not pleased you?" It was the wrong question. He shook his head. "Have you felt... as though when you are with me, it is only performance, and nothing more? Have you not enjoyed it—enjoyed me?"

 

COBRA -

 

"You doubt yourself." Cobra lifted his head. He'd suspected as much; the moment the questions of Irfan and others had left Sigvard's lips, he'd known the man would draw a comparison. And what an impossible thing, for the number of men he had fucked numbered hundreds, and those whose names he remembered could still be counted in the dozens. "You doubt yourself, now, and even in the past. Here sits Sigvard, who made my vision fade to black within the hour, doubting his sexual prowess."

 

He knew it was risky to tease him now, when his emotions were raw, but Cobra couldn't help himself. Chuckling quietly, he twisted around to pinch the man's cheek, plucking the wash cloth from his hand. "Silly pup," he murmured, nudging the blond to the water's edge so he could wash his back in kind. "Of course you've pleased me. I would have poisoned you if you had not. And I don't mean heartsbane or feverweed, for those are trifles."

 

Pressing up against the man's back, Cobra pressed a kiss to Sigvard's ear before leaning around him to cup water in his hands, letting it fall over the man's head. "What of you, then?" he asked, keen to stop the talk of his preferences when they were so hard to define. "You ask so much of me, but your own tastes seem to flow like water. Do you have favourite things? With men," he added quickly. "I am not so interested in what you do with women."

 

_ Ashi _ , the memory taunted him. Who knew how many women Sigvard had fucked. The notion of it still repulsed the little deity.

 

SIGVARD -

 

The pretty words were bittersweet. Pride was a curious glint in his eye as it caught Cobra's—faded to black, he'd said?—but was dwindling again by the time he turned to empty water. Doubt was the right word for it, and it was the wrong one. He knew full well he could make a man cum; but any fool could make a man cum, he thought, and it was the rest that made everything painfully complicated. Cobra had answered so effortlessly, so poetically, for Irfan; he’d spoken of thrill and illicitness and comfort. Sigvard only ached to know what he could do to be spoken about like that.

 

But he recognized his lover squirming out of the question, and as he was already feeling so much like a child, he tucked the matter quietly away. He would think later on how to make peace with not knowing.

 

There was a warm body against his back; he answered it, swaying gently into Cobra’s ministrations, closing his eyes to listen. He was surprised, and very very amused, to hear that any part of him could flow like water. He sounded so mysterious when put like that, so fickle, when really it was simply the case that he enjoyed absolutely everything. Still, he nodded along. He had favourites. He wouldn’t have crept into that tent if he didn’t have favourites. He might still be home if he didn’t have favourites.

 

His skin was growing hot at these thoughts; so he let a little air from his lungs and slowly sank until he felt the water wet his beard. His empty arms lifted in a loose embrace of himself, his fingertips drawing wandering lines on his skin.

 

"I do prefer men," he murmured. "I do prefer to be fucked." A noise of pain, or of concentration, fled across the water; with the oaf, it was never quite clear which. "I like the way you fuck me. You do not make me feel shame for wanting it so badly. I have not had that before." He hadn't so much as imagined it. "In the North, there is so much shame in it. It's in our songs and our stories; men who let themselves be fucked are cowards, and girls, and witches, and all these things. The men whose pricks I took, even the kindest, even the whores, would see me in that way." To say nothing of the villagers' gossip, and the reputation that followed. "I know it is nothing like you endured. But it was humiliating to exist in that place." He'd brought those cruel ideas with him to Navan, too. He'd brought them to Cobra in those first nights.

 

"You make me feel good for wanting it. As though I should want it. When you praise me, and make me beg." He rocked his head back against Cobra's chest, arching his brows to see what he could of his lover. "And pain, and poisons, too. I feel most alive with these things, when I must trust you completely. I like to be close to you, in these ways and in others. Like tonight, like before."

 

COBRA -

 

As the man drifted too far away to wash, Cobra set aside the rag and listened intently. There was recognition, a smug, smirking pride in his eyes as the blond spoke of the way he fucked, but the hunger was caught unawares by another realisation. His laughter came as a hiccup, then it rang like a bell. "Of all things," he remarked, shaking his head and leaning on his knees. "Of all things for me to be spared. I never learned this shame you speak of. They all told me I was special; so, so special, so obedient, so good. Even the one I killed called me good."

 

The hunger was back again; different, wilder. It made his eyes seem as though they were shining the fiercest blue, reflecting off the bathwater. " And I do like the way you beg," he said lowly, with a smile. Chuckling a different kind of chuckle now, he busied himself with picking the trinkets off his skin, one by one, placing them on the tiles beside the bath.

 

"It's a foul thing between Irfan and I," he said frankly, a harder edge to his words, now. They were words that Sigvard needed to hear. "He could barely sleep for weeks after the slaughter. It pushes us apart just as much as it keeps us connected. Don't aspire to it. It's not what you want, for us." There was a splash as the little deity slipped into the bathing pool, and then in the next moment his dripping face was right before Sigvard's, expression more intent than ever. " You should want it, " he told him. " You should want to serve me in all ways, and love me, and kneel for me, and even spread your legs for me. We are lovers, Sigvard. This isn't something I do lightly." 

 

SIGVARD -

 

Cobra’s voice glanced sharp across the water, talking killing, talking slaughter. Sigvard watched him like a child would. He felt as small—he’d made the mistake of envy, petty wanting, and his wise and merciful god had now shown him his foolishness and firmly corrected him. He was hushed, cowed by how little he knew. “Of course.” What a stupid thing, to have been jealous of Irfan in this way.

 

Those eyes burned through him, skin and muscle and bone, flushing his body with a cold heat. He nodded, faintly, reaching for words to tell him how badly he only wanted to serve him. Shame still tightened his throat.

 

Words, words; he’d never been one for words, anyway, and finally, visibly, he began to remember it. Watching those eyes, he drifted closer still, to push the last of the water from between their bodies and to bring his hands to Cobra’s sides. So much easier to worship without those pearls in the way, pretty as they were. "I know it," he whispered. "I am grateful." His gaze fell, then, wandering to Cobra's lips, his shoulders, his body beneath the surface. He pushed his thumbs hard into the angle of his hips, wanting him to feel the strength in his fingertips alone.

 

"I want to give you everything," he murmured, letting thoughts tumble mindlessly from his lips. "My life, yes, and everything else—I want to give you the world, my little god-king."

 

With a grunt of impatience and nothing more, he let his body go boneless, dragged beneath the surface by his own weight. Thick arms snaked around Cobra's thighs, coiling tight; his lips came to the man's taut stomach, kissing at it, worrying at it with his teeth. Feet planted on tile, he rose again, lifting his lover to tower above the water. As if to exalt him, he thought, as if to make a shrine of this place. "I will give you the world," he promised, a grin pricking at the corners of his lips. "I will make all these silly fools see you as I do."

 

COBRA -

 

God-king. The term elicited a hollow little laugh from Cobra's mouth, reaching down to ghost his fingers through the water-soft crop of Sigvard's blond hair. He didn't know what he expected when the man suddenly slumped beneath the surface of the water; a mouth on his cock, maybe, for at times, that seemed to be all the man thought about. Instead, he sound himself exalted. Perhaps it was the sound of the water falling from his dusky skin that did it: the sound, like rain (mud) that brought the vivid image of a rippling sun beyond the water's blue surface to his mind's eye. All at once, he was in the water and yet his knees were also in the sand. The weigh of it pressed his body down, back bending, bending, as it had so many times on a stage. Breathing deeply, he grabbed at the Northlander's ear like handholds, legs wrapping around his torso with the urgency of panic.

 

"This thing you call me," he muttered, stroking the wet slick of the man's hair, like a dog, but not cruelly so; as if to soothe Sig and himself both. "God-king. I am king of nothing. Barely a god at all. I have no idea how I am supposed to go about this thing, Or if it is just some kind of madness caused by Keht's presence." The last sentence was hard to swallow; it turned the slave's eyes downcast and he looked away. "Call me Cobra, Sigvard, and I will be yours and you will be mine." He ceased patting the man's hair to trace his cheek with his fingers. "No matter how I feel about it, one disciple is easy to manage," he smiled. 

 

SIGVARD -

 

The raw fear in that little body, in that voice, was chilly on Sigvard’s skin; he shivered at it, but did not balk. His arms came tight around him. He listened to his uncertainty tie itself in knots, watching warm and patient, and waded through the bath just to feel the gentle current make way.

 

“I will call you Cobra,” he granted. Measuring his next words, he made use of his mouth at the man’s chest: A soft kiss, and then a thought to suckle a water-drop away. He nursed it from his lip with a sound of concentration. “But you are my one god,” he murmured plainly, “and you are my one king. This seems small to you, but to me it is everything.” Leaning back to feel the weight of his lover, his gaze was light with a smile. “And the rest— _ how _ and  _ if _ and these things—there is no sense in being afraid of what you do not know, or do not yet know.” There was sublime freedom in letting go of these things; he knew it from stumbling blind into battle, stumbling blind into most things, and he sounded the part.

 

Thick arms squeezed tighter, and his grin spread wide in quiet, shaking laughter. “There is so much to be afraid of in what we know, little thing. The desert, and this kingslaying business, and the fire-fuckers in the Capital. Let’s lay awake thinking of that, before anything else.”

 

COBRA -

 

is chest rose and fell as his breathing returned to a normal pace, finding the big man's reassurances more soothing than anything else, not thta his lips were unwelcome. Still, though, he wriggled; squirming to be let down a fraction so he could be held at a more comfortable height, where his legs could wrap around the brute's waist and find purchase there. "Sigvard," he murmured in reply, listening thoughtfully. He understood, and yet he didn't, in part, because he had never thought of a king as something desirable to have ruling over one's life.

 

"The Urdai don't have Kings," he murmured, managing to find a glimmer of humour in the canyon between their cultures. "There is only Urd." And the gods only knew how the roaming circus had segregated itself from the ways of the Northlands it traveled through... Better not to think who would be named King in that small, terrible world.

 

Leaning down, he placed a kiss on the man's forehead. "They do love fire so much," he mused aloud, curious more than foreboding, for the memories of Keht had become familiar and it had been the ocean the old god feared, not the flames. "They walk in hot coals on the beaches as if they feel no pain. I saw it, in a dream. And my face... Keht's face, the vessel, I mean, from all that time ago..." the slave corrected himself hastily, running his thumb over the blond man's forehead, from eyebrow to temple, into the hairline . "He was burned from here to here. And they thought him all the more holy for it. Imagine these people, so happy to be burned." He scoffed with disbelief. "I hope the city falls when the king is toppled. Perhaps Hamad will root them out."

 

SIGVARD -

 

A dream. Cobra’s words were as good as one, his voice rich on the water, talking ancient stories and otherworldly things, making the warrior’s head swim. He imagined that dark fingertip a flame: Every nerve going white-hot under its touch, he  _ felt _ that grisly burn, creeping over his scalp and digging roots to bone.

 

In the Northlands, scars were stories; revered in their own way, he supposed, but not for the blade or the bite or the fire that borne them, and rather for the man left behind. To hear his lover scoff as though it made as little sense to him as it did to Sigvard himself was some relief. He pushed his forehead to the slave’s chin and cooed his gratitude. His embrace slackened just slightly, so that his fingertips could wander: Down the length of Cobra’s spine, and up along his ribs, and tracing the angle of his shoulder blade. Trying to memorize the shape of him without seeing.

 

He kept close like this, even as he lofted a brow. “Hamad?” He couldn’t speak the name without derision. The petty Duke had been cowering since Keht’s arrival; he had left his so-called  _ nadameer _ to manage the mess, as he had planned to do with the king-slaying and likely more after that if he had his way of things. The man, the snake, was not fit to lead. “If he does, he is not so much a coward as I think.” The pale giant shrugged, lifting his eyes to Cobra’s. “You know him best.”

 

With an uncomfortable noise of thinking, Sigvard made a slow path for the bath’s edge. He was pink, and waterlogged, and might have liked some hot coals on the beach to dry by. “I gave him a blood pact. I told him I would bring you back when the deed is done. And when I don’t...? Will he root us out too, hm? What does he do to men who fail him?”

 

COBRA -

 

"Hamad?" Cobra frowned. "Who knows what he will do. I have never seen him run away like this, but then again, I have never seen a god housed inside a man before, and neither has he, I'm sure."

 

"It is true," Hamad's serene voice echoed off the tiled walls.

 


	20. Greetings from Beyond

COBRA

 

Cobra tensed in Sigvard's arms, head whipping round to see Hamad leaning against the door frame, goblet in hand, his dark chest exposed by an open robe belted at the waist. A bathing robe, though what he was doing with it here was unusual, for his vast chambers certainly included his own private bathing pool.

 

" _ Nadameer _ are renowned for their ability to fade in and out of places," Hamad drawled, strolling into the chamber at a slow, leisurely pace. "No names, no fealty except for the pacts they make... stealth comes easily to them. Together, you two make terrible  _ nadameer _ ," he chuckled. "Finding you is easy; all one needs to do is follow the sound of screaming, or reports of naked wandering. And here I find you, wondering what I will do to those who fail me."

 

He stopped at the bath's edge, making sure it was the opposite side the the one the pair were on. He was confident, yes, but not a fool: Sigvard had long since developed a reputation for aggressive outbursts in Navan. "Do you imagine I'll wage war for you?" the Duke scoffed. "Send men thousands of miles into the snow to take you back? Please. Things that fail me are cast aside. But you would be stupid to do it," he warned them. "For when the time comes that your are inevitably broken and you have no place of comfort to return to, Navan's gates will be closed to you. And on that night, the desert will feel just as cold as any mountain." 

 

"Fuck Navan," Cobra snapped. "I have no reason to return."

 

"No, but your little whore-friend might. Broken by your actions already, and now you get him banished from his only home? His brothers in the guard?" Hamad clicked his tongue, taking a sip of wine. "It will be hard to gain followers, as a promise-breaker."

 

" _ Your _ actions!" Cobra argued, crawling from the pool to get to his feet. 

 

"The ends, but not the means," Hamad reminded him sternly, raising a finger. "And what of you, Sigvard?" he chuckled, jutting his chin towards the bite scar on his great, pink chest. "What promises has he made you? Do you think he will break them?"

 

SIGVARD

 

Cunt. For him to show his face now, of all times, as though his singular purpose was to ruin their fun.

 

Sigvard lingered in the bath, dipping low in the water to cool his burning cheeks. He'd been foolish, caught, humiliated. It was a balm, at least, to see Hamad keep his distance; to see the man who cowered from Keht cower from him, too. His smile glimmered beneath the water, and the temptation to make his way closer tugged at his chest.

 

Cobra's voice glancing off water and stone put a swift end to the idea. Loud as it was, echoing at him from a hundred directions, it would have been godly indeed but for the weakness that strung through it. Barking, like a trapped animal. So the soldier turned his back to the Duke, and hauled himself from the water. In the deafening sound of the rain coming off his massive body, his eyes caught the vial of Prialilly still sat at the bath's edge—it was as good as a weapon to Hamad, he knew, and so he snatched it up and made his way for the towels.

 

"The same as you have," he answered plainly. The gnarled flesh of his shoulder prickled and burned at the bite's mention, in spite of his furious scrubbing with the drying-rag. "Freedom in my homeland." Here, he turned to Hamad. The Duke was wrong in many things, but he was right in the matter of a promise-breaking god being a lonely one—although Sigvard would not humiliate his little master by saying so here and now. "He may break it," he granted, "but I trust he would break it for good reason. I would serve him all the same. This is what it is to love your master." He wondered if any of Hamad's people had such love for him.

 

So if it came to be that Cobra broke his promise, he would make peace with it. He would make peace with the cold of the desert, too, but there was the matter of Irfan; he had seen the home he had made of this place, yes, and the family he had made of the guardsmen. He held love for him, too; and so Hamad's mention of him had complicated everything.

 

"You heard us," he pointed out gruffly, "so you heard me say I would do it all the same. The deed, the murder." It was only the matter of  _ afterwards _ , this pact to bring Cobra back to this place, that he had never intended to honour. "We will give you a whole kingdom—is that not payment enough for Cobra's freedom, and Irfan's, to come and go as they please?"

 

COBRA

 

At this, Hamad laughed, richly and openly, as if the words freedom in my homeland were the punchline of some great joke. "He may as well have promised you the moon," he said lowly. "Of either of us, who better to give you what you want than I? Who of us has riches, power, political influence? I could see rights of buggery brought into common law in the Northlands, if I set my mind to it. And yet still, blindly, you follow him." Grimacing, the tall man turned on his heel to fetch a wash pail, somehow rendering each movement it took to fetch and fill it with the air of a stabbing knife. "Yet I suppose that is the difference between you and I," he drawled. "You have a master. I am one. It is your follies that keep you weak; your reckless promises and debts to your lessers keep you subjugated."

 

"You say  _ I _ lack cruelty?" Cobra scoffed, a hiccup of disbelieving laughter bubbling up from this throat. 

 

"That you are  _ concerned  _ with cruelty at all is the problem." Hamad's eyes narrowed. "And you," he turned his head to Sigvard again. "Do not give yourself so much credit: you pay me nothing. There are no guarantees of your success, and even if you do succeed, a dead king does not make a kingdom mine. There are dozens of things that could go wrong and stop my ascension to the throne in the Capital. And you can both be there to help me overcome them, provided you are not stupid enough to go running off into the snow."

 

SIGVARD

 

The towel was sodden and heavy in Sigvard's hand, and in this moment he would have enjoyed nothing more than to toss it into the Duke's scowling face. Or, here—it would be four long strides, he measured, until he could wrench that pail from his grip and soak him, or spit in his goblet of wine. Or all of it.

 

Or none of it all. If he didn't know it was a stupid thing to talk of betraying a lord in that lord's own bath, he at least knew it was a stupid thing to drown him in it. So he flexed an empty fist, and half-turned to catch Cobra's eye. His own were dreading. Imploring: Give him a reason, any reason, to rub this fool's nose in the dirt, or give him something else to do with his useless hands.

 

"I do not follow him blindly," he said thinly, watching his lover still. Tossing the damp rag and plucking a dry one from the bench, he set to dragging it over the slave's chest as delicately as he could manage. "I follow him because he has already rewarded my servitude. Even here, even under your thumb, he has found ways to reward me." With his body. With the beautiful numbness of shark venom. With stuffed figs. Most of all, with purpose; with a reason for carrying on in this strange new world, after his own had ended in the mountains, with those faces screaming at the sky.

 

"All you offer, then, is more trouble." His head was heavy with the effort of trying to concentrate on drying Cobra's arms and this impossible negotiation all at once. "We do this thing for you, and you promise us dozens of more dungheaps to help you out of. I will be better at killing if I have a reason to kill that is not your fat ass on some pretty throne—so what will you offer us, on our return, hm?"

 

COBRA

 

In the flickering candlelight, refracted onto the bathhouse walls by the rippling surface of the bathing pool, Hamad's eyes watching the blond man carefully as he spoke. Scowling, he clicked his tongue. "Irksome," he cursed him, taking another deep swig of wine. The wash pail sat on the floor by his ankles, forgotten. I may well have been that the man had no intentions of bathing at all.

 

"That's why I still want him, you realise. All this," he gestured elaborately at the shorter man, "Quality, of something, that makes people love him so. I saw it the first day he was cast onto the floor of my receiving chamber. Imprisoned for murder, and yet still he lured a guard to the bars of his jail cell to steal the key. I saw the affect he had on men, and I knew it would be useful, and so now I own him."

 

"It's a curse to own an Urdai." Cobra reminded the Duke lowly, fixing him with a disdainful eye as he extended his arms to let his lover dry him. 

 

"Says who, hm!?" Hamad snapped. "Everyone says this thing, but who was even here to say it first? The Navanese came from across the sea and the fire worshippers came from across the sea and the mountain pass didn't exist until men made it, so who says this thing!?"

 

"Shall I let him tell you personally?" Cobra asked with a hard glare, stretching his neck.

 

Hamad flinched. Scowling even deeper still, he drained the rest of his goblet and threw it over his shoulder with little regard for the way the glass parts of it shattered on the tiles. "You complain of dungheaps, yet here you are, so keen on wading through the dung with everyone else instead of sitting on the second-highest rung of the ladder," he scoffed, storming towards the door. He paused on the way, just so he could sneer at the brute eye to eye. "I should have fucked you on the first night you showed up at my door, claiming to be some diplomat. Perhaps then it would be me you worship. Perhaps, if my slave is smart enough not to fail me, one day we can fuck you together."

 

SIGVARD

 

Every nerve was alive in tension. These men, these forces, warring on either side of him. The threat of the ancient thing. The crash of that goblet on stone, coming painful to his ears, etching like a blade up his spine and into the root of his skull. Every nerve was alive, yes, reddening his skin, making his blood run hot with the wonderful terrible instinct of killing.

 

Sigvard's breathing was even, but it was deep and it was quick, and he caught the lord's look with a wild one. It soured deeply at talk of  _ fucking _ , of all things. The fleeting, fearful thought: How long had the snake been listening...?

 

It didn't matter. There was a chilly grip at his lungs all the same, choking him to stupid silence as the man made to leave. "You...!" A half-step forward, remembering words, forgetting his duty with the towel. He bellowed after the Duke, not to be heard—he would be heard all the same—but to drown out all the rest of this ridiculous noise: "If I want to fuck a thing like you, I will buy him for a copper! Cunt!" To think he'd had him once. To think he'd  _ liked  _ him, once. "Go, then! You go. We leave in the morning to do this thing—you go, you scheme, you come find me before we set out and you give me a reason to return to this wretched place!"

 

His lungs were heaving. His body was wound tight, and there was fire in his blood, and the only things for him to kill in this world were goats and kings. He needed release. "I need to fight," he muttered, hoarse, half to himself, half to the walls around them. He needed to hit, to be hit, until there was the delicious ache of bruises and breathing was all he could think of.

 

So he started his hulking mass towards the door. "I must find Irfan." He remembered, of course; the guardsman was broken, like Hamad had said, made to fight, made to kill, and all that blood besides. Maybe he wouldn't fight. Maybe one of his so-called brothers would.

 

KEHT

 

Stepping into Cobra's consciousness was as easy as stepping through a veil. He'd been summoned to it, after all: whether the little Urdai was aware of it or not, his threat to have Hamad hear one of Keht's edicts personally had brought the old god's unseen, blue eyes to the forefront of Cobra's mind. Even as Sigvard turned away, the old god was already here, his eyes flickering for a moment before his posture changed, as though a puppet string pulled up his spine and made his shoulders squared, his head held high in a regal fashion. He turned it immediately to Urd's direction. Even through tile and brick and stone and hundreds of yards of desert, he could sense his presence. The presence of another, too: the witch. The witch, who, even though blind, still had ears and a mouth and tongue and far too much curiousity for Keht's liking, in that moment. It was not the foulest thing, this thirst for knowledge, but for the matter at hand, he craved privacy. After decades without his own corporeal form, oh, how he craved privacy. 

 

"You want to fight someone," his voice rang across the bathroom, stopping the big blond man in his track. He turned his head enough to look at Sigvard instead of Urd's location, a hint of white teeth showing from behind his dusky lips. "You, who does not know what you keep from me," he smiled, looking down at one palm as he curled his fingers into a fist. "These limbs are short, but I remember how to move. Would you like to feel them?" he offered. For all his humour, there was an edge of resent in his words, and his smile was not as bright as it might have been if he were making an honest joke without pretence. "Or if you want to feel pain, shall I find a quarterstaff?" 

 

SIGVARD

 

That voice came like a thunder-crack, like a lash against his naked skin. He knew it like he knew that rigid posture—half-turning, yes, he saw it now—and he understood in an instant that he had been left alone again.

 

His look was a wary one. He had lost what remained of his hatred for this ancient thing when they were last here in this place, and his fear of him some time before that. What was left was an uncomfortable strangeness that he scarcely had the patience for; less so now when he boiled with impotent rage at Hamad, the snake, and less and less and less with each word pressed through those gleaming teeth.

 

" _ Keep _ from you," he whispered, his disbelief a tightness in the words and in his rocking head alike. He didn't owe this wretched thing a bit, he thought, and still he'd been generous: He'd told Keht he'd ask Cobra, his god, his master, about letting the beast go off to the chieftain in the desert to be choked or to be fucked or to be pissed on or whatever else. He'd promised to ask, and he'd asked, and that was more than Keht was due. But here he was, naming him some kind of captor. Maybe that was right. Maybe that was better.

 

The mention of a weapon promised little thinking and less conversation, and so he had turned on his heel in an instant for the door again. "Come," he muttered. He had been at the 'mercy' of those limbs before, and could not imagine mere memory making the fight a fair one.

 

Earlier, on their happy way into the bath—what felt like hours ago, now, though he knew it was impossible—there had been a smooth-faced soldier standing ten yards down the hall. There he was, still; and ten yards beyond that, two more were chattering together in excited upset, and he knew it was that way Hamad must have gone. Coward. Cunt. Later, later he would have him at the end of a fist. For now, he stormed to the boy-guard, seeing the way he pressed his back to the wall and curled his grip tight around his spear.

He was on him in a moment, not a foot between. "I want to go to the small courtyard," he huffed. An open space, and quiet, which he half-remembered stumbling through in a stupour some weeks ago. "Which way?"

 

The boy's lips opened, then hung, startled. His fellows down the hall had quit their talking to watch. Finally, stumbling thickly through the Common tongue: "Steps—steps, there," he indicated with a flick of his eyes, "to right, at top of steps."

 

Sigvard turned his head, as if the stairs had to be seen to be believed, then nodded to the young thing. "Fine." Heat tickled down his arms, imaginary droplets running rivulets beneath his skin. He swatted at them pointlessly, then jutted his chin towards the guard's weapon and a finger towards Keht. "Give Cobra your spear."

 

KEHT

 

"Keep from me," the old god repeated gamely with fire burning on Cobra's eyes. As ancient as he was, it wasn't his way to read minds, but that didn't stop him from having some inkling of the blond's dislike for him. He made it plain enough, after all. And that was fine: the feeling was mutual; similar, even. Yet, as Keht saw it, he understood quite plainly what his presence in Cobra's body denied Sigvard. Sigvard had no idea what he denied Keht by subverting his will: he did not even have a way to fathom it. And so he scolded him, and thought him a fool. Even now, he told this boy-faced soldier to hand over his spear. The sharpened metal tip gleamed under the lantern light and when Keht took it in his hands and made to twirl it in the strong grip of his right hand, it hit the floor with a deafening crack that echoed in the sandstone chamber.

 

"Too long," he said with a croaking laugh, sneering up at the brute. He'd asked for a quarterstaff for a reason: he was not so tall, any more, not in this form. The spear was too long and ungainly in his hands. "Too long", he said again, chuckling as he pushed it back into the guards hands. It was better this way - Cobra would hate him beyond measure if he made his lover bleed. He'd probably already be angry by the fact that they were fighting at all. So be it: Cobra denied Keht, too.

 

"My hands, then," he grumbled, brushing past the guard and climbing the big man's body as though it was some kind of tree. Wrapping his arms around the man's shoulders, he locked an elbow around his neck. Still gentle enough to be playing, for now; he wasn't that much of a cheat. But one squeeze brought some pink back to the man's cheeks after they'd cooled from the bath. 

 

"Do you think this body is weak, Sigvard?" he chuckled near the man's ear, knees digging into his sides as he clung there. "Is that why you give me a bladed weapon? Take us to the courtyard and I will show you what he can do."

 

SIGVARD

 

_ Too long. _ Too long talking, too long fussing over this weapon or that and making petty excuses. Sigvard’s first thought was to snatch the spear, to jam the blade between the tiles at his feet and with a good kick to shorten it—but he was snubbed, if not by the spirit’s muttering, by the guard’s two friends’ careful approach from down the hall. He grunted. Too long thinking.

 

Far above the courtyard, in the night sky framed by the surrounding rooftops, the full moon seemed to hang bloated and heavy. It bleached Sigvard’s skin, and the stone beneath his feet. It slipped between the hissing fronds of towering palms and kissed each grateful jasmine blossom in the fat little pots tucked in each corner. It was cold, very cold, against the warm torchlight in the halls beyond the tall columns that stood guard of the perimeter. This was a peaceful place. The warrior, stepping into openness, knew that he did not belong here, and the friction between the moon’s quiet song and his own frenetic existence only made him boil more and more. His body made a small and mournful noise.

 

Meaty hands snatched Keht’s forearm at his elbow and wrist. Aiming to tug it free of his neck, yes, and aiming to keep him no further and no closer than arm’s length if he planned to quit using him as a mount. “Do not hurt his body,” he implored. “Do not let me—stop me if I have done damage. Please.”

 

KEHT

 

Dismounted, he let himself be dragged by the elbow into the moonlit courtyard, emitting a whickering little snicker all the way. "This body," he parroted, tilting his head from side to side. "Just how fiercely do you intend to fight me, Sigvard? My people use sparring as teaching, not spite. It is good for them to learn the places where they can be struck by the shaft of a spear, so they know how to manage it. It's not just the point that is useful. And I resent you, yes, but not enough to break your bones."

 

Pulling away from the brute, he rose up on his toes, testing the way his body shifted balance from his heels to the balls of his feet. "This one's legs are strong," he said, drawing one knee up to block an imaginary kick. "He'll kick well. Shall we begin?" he asked, circling Sigvard warily. "I will let myself cry out if there's too much pain. As for bruises... well, I've been with him through much worse." His smile didn't quite spread to his eyes with that remark, not with the way he'd been teasing the man before. And evidently, the old god was intent of letting Sigvard make the first move, still circling until the larger man committed to an attack.

 

SIGVARD

 

Cunt. Speaking to him like a boy, as though he had never sparred, as though he hadn’t memorized all the useful parts of a spear or an axe or a rock or even those fat little pots of jasmine. He knew the spirit had lived many lives. But it took just one to learn the way of fighting, and Sigvard had been doing it since the moment he’d been ripped from the womb.

 

He was heaving, now, watching with a hawk’s eye as that stranger surrounded him. His opponent would be quick and light on his feet, and the Northlander knew his own body would tire quickly if he did not measure every move. So he measured. “I do not want to spar,” he barked.  _ He’ll kick well _ . Good. He would aim to tangle his legs, then, or to bring him to the ground and make them useless. “I told you. I need to  _ fight _ !” Watching, watching. His muscles were taut, aching. The little prick was waiting for him. Coward, cunt, like Hamad. Fine. He bent, and lunged, and swung his wide reach to hook around his middle.

 

KEHT

 

Angry, heavy, slow. He'd been kind: Keht had not insisted that they fight on the desert sands, where his advantage would have been enormous. Here, in the courtyard, Sigvard still has some hope of manoeuvring. But he was angry, and he was heavy, and he was slow. It was the angriness that was his largest weakness: it made him impatient and that impatience was predictable. When the brute lunged, so did he, not back or to the side but  _ over _ , using his powerful legs to vault over the man's grasp. He all but rolled off the man's back, barely glancing off the ground before he twisted and he was up on his feet again. An acrobat. Of course. That was what this body knew. What Cobra lacked in battle instinct and reaction speed, Keht more than made up for.

 

"Are you angry?" he taunted. "Is it terrible? Have you been kept from your lover for a hundred years?" His words were heavy with spite. Petty, yes: even gods were not above petty. Turning his body to the side, he darted in with a grunt, aiming a kick at the man's side. 

 

SIGVARD

 

_ Lover _ . Neither the ancient thing nor the chieftain out there knew the meaning of the word, Sigvard thought, his mind racing with fury. A hundred years touch-starved and he would have killed anyone who put themselves between him and a warm embrace; but here he stood in the courtyard, acutely alive.

 

Painfully so. If he could have moved to block the kick, he didn’t. He only relaxed his thick body, letting the blow go to soft guts instead of hard muscle—and as the crushing shock scattered his insides and pushed his heart into his throat, he dropped his arms to where the creature’s leg was embedded at his waist and caught it in an iron grip. He did not answer the taunt. He could not take the breath to. In choked silence, trying for surprise rather than pain, he twisted Keht’s leg outward a half-turn and pulled him suddenly closer. Throwing his whole weight at that little body, he brought them both scrambling to the ground and thrust his hands at his throat.

 

KEHT

 

Angry, heavy, slow: but strong. The kick hurt, no doubt, but it wasn't enough to knock Sigvard's heavy frame off balance, and by the time Keht realised this, in just a fraction of a second, it was already too late. His other foot dragged roughly across the ground as he was bodily yanked closer by the beast. On instinct, his arms flew out to stop his face smashing into the ground as they tumbled down, and then the meaty hand was already at his throat. The blackness came quickly, but not before the ancient god's fingers ensnared Sigvard's blond locks, taking him with him.

 

_ WHAT DID YOU DO? _ a strange voice bellowed. Angry, male. There is screaming and wailing in what appears to be a village square and the brief flash of ground the vision offers is smeared with blood: hand prints, foot prints. In the blink of an eye there is something pink and bloody and unrecognisable, then Keht's eyes were pulled up to the sky, a furious man in fine robs looking down at him with horror and disgust in his eyes.

 

"What did you do?!" he demands, shaking him by the shoulders with each word. There is a long beat before Keht answers with one softly-spoken word.

 

"Blood."

 

A clatter, and the hellish scene is gone as quickly as it came. A handful of pebbles has been dropped into a hollow carved out of a wooden plank. There are many hollows in the plank: a game, perhaps. It seems each hollow needs a stone before moving on to the next. The last stone lands in an empty hollow and the turn is done. The hand moving the stones is Keht's own: unnaturally long, the skin striped with shades of blue that faded in and out of different hues.

 

"They have fire, now," an entirely new voice says. Keht lifts his head to behold a man, or at least what looks like one. A Northlander: he and Sigvard could have been cousins, judging by his beard alone. This one was a redhead, though, and his thicker features and roughly hewn clothes suggested this was a time long ago. 

 

"Did you give it to them?" Keht asked, watching as the man took his turn at the board between them.

 

"Not that kind of fire," the man said, eyes twinkling. "Flint and rock: they figured it out."

 

"Mine got theirs from the lightning, when it struck the reeds." Keht recalled. "They've kept the same flame going ever since. The lightning struck the sand, also: they like the way that the glass catches the light."

 

"What will they do when it goes out?" the bearded god asked.

 

"I will show them the way with sticks and string," Keht shrugged. "Too cruel to take it away now that they have it. It keeps the old ones alive in the night."

 

His musings were met with a hearty laugh. "I told you they would grow on you," the Northern god said. "They grow on everyone."

 

"Is that why you wear their skin?" Keht asked, cocking his head to one side as he picked up a handful of rocks.

 

"This one was close to dying," the man said, turning his palms to the sky. "He doesn't mind. I can teach you, if you like. Oh?" he paused, blue eyes suddenly staring into Keht's with otherworldly focus. "It would seem we're not alone. Hail, Sigvard," he leered.

 

Coughing, spluttering, Cobra drew in a desperate, rasping breath as Sigvard's hand grew slack back in the present. Swearing, he swatted the man's hands away, pushing himself up to sit as one hand gingerly inspected the damage to his throat. Not as terrible as it had been in the past, but he was still indignant. "Sigvard!" he scolded him. "What did you do!?" 

 

SIGVARD

 

Sigvard. He had answered to this name all his life. There must have been a moment in infancy, deep beyond the fog of his memory, when he had come to understand that Sigvard was him, and him Sigvard.

 

There must have been a moment, but now it seemed impossible. Like every introduction had been some frail lie. Like pantomime. Like those first days in Navan with his body straining against the ambassador’s fine clothes. For those hard blue eyes fixed on his, and he felt he had never been seen before this. ‘Sigvard’ fell from bearded lips, and he felt as though he had been named for the first time. It was warm, and wonderful, and heavy, in the way of a blanket pulled tight about his shoulders.

 

It came for him again. That name; shriller this time. He rocked his head, and in so doing realized he had one, and that it laid heavily against a stone floor along with the rest of him. He opened his eyes to that full and heavy moon. He remembered that moon, and the stars, and time, and as these things flooded into him, they rushed out  _ fire  _ and  _ blood _ .

 

He whimpered a complaint. He could not let himself forget; he had been in a place of such clarity, such understanding. What had he done? “I don’t know,” he mumbled feebly. There had been fighting, of course, but there was an infinity between then and now that he felt he had to answer for. It was slipping through his fingers. He made fists. “There was Keht. Gods, and fire—the oldest fire. I understand it now; fire, a flame kept sacred, passed on and on.”

 

His brow furrowed. “And blood. I don’t understand the blood. A man in robes, do you remember...?” He rolled his head to Cobra.  _ He doesn’t mind _ . A lurch in his stomach and all other things forgotten. Softer: “Are you hurt?”

 

COBRA

 

The courtyard. This wasn't the last place Cobra remembered being, and Keht was the only logical answer for that. He supposed he only had himself to blame, this time, for coaxing the old god so close to the surface of his mind in order to threaten Hamad. But even with Keht inside it, Cobra's body could hardly overpower Sigvards. Of that, he was sure. So the brute must have agreed to something, for them to be here. Judging by the ache in his body from tumbling to the ground and the welts raising on Sigvard's pink and white skin, it had been rough. Yet why did he look so afraid, now?

 

"Sigvard," Cobra tried again, a furrow in his brow as he crawled closer to the man, brushing blond hair away from his face to better study the look in his harrowed eyes. "What happened? Do you mean a vision?" His eyebrows raised as the thought occurred to him. Of course, he remembered nothing of it himself. 

 

Was  _ he  _ hurt? Briefly bewildered, the shorter man shook his head and cupped Sigvard's face in his hands. "What did you see?' he implored him. "You look as though you've seen a ghost."

 

SIGVARD

 

Touch—now he remembered touch, the warmth of it, the tenderness. In spite of the weight of his arms, he hooked hands ‘round Cobra’s wrists to keep them there. He closed his eyes in relief, and turned his lips to his lover’s palm. His great head, still swimming, nodded vaguely.

“A vision,” he parroted. “I saw...” Drifting into silence, he drew a long breath and pushed it through his nose in total dissatisfaction. How did his little god manage it? To make sense of these glimpses of the universe, to put words to it? Language didn’t seem sufficient, or at least not what he knew of it. “Keht,” he began, or ended, he wasn’t yet sure. Letting his hands fall, he pushed palms to stone, heaving his body to sit upright next to the other’s. The posture did something for his sanity, at least.

 

“At the beginning of time. He did not have a vessel.” Half-lidded eyes made a slow journey over his lover’s body, marveling at the play of light and shadow on his nakedness. “He did not know how.” And now, he supposed, the creature had lost so much of himself to the amber that he could not walk this world without. “There was another god with him who knew, who wore—who took a vessel. A Northlander.” The man had been dying, the bearded god had said, and so he didn’t mind. Wasn’t there a damned dying Urdai that Keht could have taken instead of Cobra...? Wasn’t there dozens? “They played...” He shook his head. “They talked of fire. The first fire. In your people, it was lightning. Did you know? It struck reeds, and they passed the flame along.” His eyes narrowed. “There was a moment when I understood. Fire, and what it meant to the ones in the Capital. But it is gone from me now.”

 

The soldier's blue-eyed gaze had found Cobra’s lips, and he watched them now like he didn’t quite comprehend their purpose. “He said my name,” he murmured. “The pale one.” A hand had lifted. Calloused fingertips played at the angle of his lover’s waist, and he dropped his eyes to watch the dance of shadow. “Something else, something later. Blood, and a man in robes. Keht had done a terrible thing. A horror.” At last, he fixed his little god’s eyes with a hard curiosity. “Do you know the meaning of any of this...? Has Urd told you?”

  
  
  


COBRA

 

It was odd to be listening (truly, properly) to a story. To wonder, to hang on every detail. Cobra had spent so long in Hamad's palace that all the politics and smooth talk and inane blathering masking hidden motives had turned him into a jaded half-listener, his mind often already tuning out words before they'd scarcely begun. But he listened, now, and he felt small in the face of the ideas that Sigvard presented. Of when time began, of immortality, and the very first people that there were. He didn't feel quite so small when he had witnessed visions first hand, but to hear them like this... he wondered if Sigvard had felt the same way, before the tables had been turned.

 

"The mountain god," he nodded. "I've never seen him, but I remember stories about their meetings. They met at the mountain pass. It's how the Urdai began trade with the goatherds, too, before they left the city." But why had they left? That was the question. Surely the blood had something to do with it but then again, Cobra was so sure that all his visions of the city falling had been of fire, of burning. Sigvard mentioned none of that, now: he only spoke of the first flames to be used by man. 

 

"I've never heard about the fire before," he shook his head. "It's... a tool, the Urdai don't worship it in the same way that the people at the Capital do. Perhaps... perhaps we can ask Urd about it, in the caravan."

But Sigvard wasn't done with his tale, and what Cobra heard next made the air feel cold and somehow queasy at the back of his neck. A wrongness, an idea that his mind resisted. "Some kind of prophecy, maybe?" The words were already weak when they left his lips: he could see it written all over Sigvard's face that it had not been like that at all. Whimpering, he pressed his hands tighter against the man's jaw. "He's gone, now," he tried to soothe him. Ashi loomed in the back of his mind. He ignored it. "If he only saw you through Keht's eyes, he can't do anything, now. Keht is sleeping, and I am here." Speaking softly, he leaned forward to plant a kiss on the man's forehead.

 

"We'll ask Urd, tomorrow," he decided aloud. It didn't feel much like a decision: it felt more like their only choice. "He must know  _ something _ ."

  
  


SIGVARD

 

Tomorrow. Sigvard had spent the night working furiously to ward off tomorrow, with pearls, with the bath, but now the weight of it hung like a yoke from his neck. He bent wearily beneath it. Thick arms came around Cobra's lithe body, hauling him close, and his heavy head fell to the crook of his shoulder to shield his eyes from the image of the old gods' own. He didn't want to remember; he didn't want to forget. "I am tired," he mumbled thinly. It was a comfort to hear that that ancient thing slumbered. But he knew it would not last for long.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
